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CREATIVE TEACHING 


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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORE - BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS 
ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO: 


MACMILLAN & CO., Luarrep 
LONDON » BOMBAY - CALCUTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm. 
TORONTO 





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Creative Teaching 


Letters to a Church School Teacher 





BY: ies 
JOHN WALLACE SUTER, Jr. 


Hew Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1927 
All rights reserved 


CoprricHt, 1924 
Br THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Set up and printed. 
Published October, 1924. 
Reprinted September, 1925. 
June, i927 


4 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


To My Brst TracHEr 
I AscriBp 
Aut Tue Goop Inzas In Tuts Boox 
Anp Att Irs Errors 
To My Brst TEAcHER’s 


Most GrRateruL Pupit 





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


The author is grateful to Professor George A. Barton 
for permission to use the verses (author unknown) 
which appear in Letter 13, and which are quoted in his 
book, Jesus of Nazareth; to the Sunday School Times 
Company for permission to quote in Letter 13 from 
the Rev. C. S. Beardslee’s Teacher-Training with the 
Master Teacher; to Houghton Mifflin Company for 
permission to use in Letter 64 a quotation from Fellow 
Travellers, by Mr. MacGregor Jenkins; and to Charles 
Scribner’s Sons for allowing the inclusion i in Letter 72 
of The Good Teacher, by Dr. Henry Van Dyke. 

Very special thanks are due to Longmans, Green and 
Company for their permission to print here a number 
of the Prayers and Meditations of Professor Henry 
Sylvester Nash, for the ideals of this great teacher and 
scholar, so nobly expressed in these prayers, have con- 
stantly fortified the author in the writing of this book. 





PREFACE 


This book sets forth in a non-technical manner cer- 
tain principles of teaching. It is not a textbook, but 
is intended to be read by an individual rather than 
studied in a class. It is intended for people (whether 
young or old) who have never studied pedagogy or 
had any regular course of teacher-training, and is 
designed to prepare such persons to make their first 
studies in that field. 

The principles here described apply to any age of 
pupil, and to pupil or teacher of either sex. 

For convenience these letters assume that the reader 
teaches a class which meets on Sunday, but the sug- 
gestions made are equally applicable to weekday 
schools of religion. 

The letters are intended to help teachers of religion 
in any Christian communion. 

Even a casual reader will see that the book does not 
attempt to cover completely the subject of principles 
and methods of teaching. Its aim, on the contrary, is 
to arouse in the reader a thirst for knowledge. 





S os le s& 
Pr okay 


YOUR JOB 


LETTER PAGE 
MANY HAM ISA 1 ACUI sce) ei itahes te cgiie valticday Wigan el arte 17 
MAL ESBIA DIE oie k ho eaa noir haus uke iain etn. NIL ocd SOU Pe 17 
Se BOLD IDRA AND THE IND ls ce We CA ee 18 
MESES ESTED cry gv os eee MA OE eee otal ANT ce ehtan ne 20 
5. Your MANUAL oR LESSON QUARTERLY. ........-6 21 
VAULTED CO WIN, ERBIAGION 3) oi. eee pte VAIN Mica ant a Hinata weenie 21 
PAR SPIRISU AT CARMND tie ari etr lcetie sl tan wo elead (ero eh oonst tis 22 
Bee, TON D) cual eMule ae hie te ees ONO ona Bre a mL Lana Res ih oe 24 
VERE tA TD LITA IOS: chi release PEN RN eke age 25 

ADE ES ITON OOM rn Ue ctn ee et oy een Sh RL ME ACN cy ie ON Ook 26 

ME SEU RID MDE NDS Foe coe LAT eee oo Oe ake eel ge Goat ati 26 

PIA DOROOL AND READING {6 2) S80. ah bade he ee aes 29s 

13. Way Know So Many Tuoinas? .........628 29 

POURS GI UNG Pee Cleo TN a Reh Se uly ara) 7g hekU ie) AON gc lihy Leia nema mne kane 31 

“ YOUR PREPARATION 

LETTER PAGE 

ct EM et aT WS Oy nal NN, SON ne eA A OR cer aN Wo 35 

LE GS 2 See Ream Ik CaN ea ea oak Sec Ae MOC MoD 39 

MMAR MTC IR ESR hes Coe he iad gL O artic Lei hg De all's Mia eey ak 43 

MP RPIS RELI RE Gt ace 8a ILM e Seine a Pa gs ba oe Lee ite ae ah ccar ality 45 

Po NS Fai Sy ie Taek oan a eet i UR PS oe ray et a 46 

IMM MRSORRC ER recat tun. Gh rene cites wiie Pro Wl Wet, Ge Nl aie Br rae an 47 

LATOR CSUTEINW AG re foe ol ceeeedd ge by bec Seen eh eae 50 

PO WHOUTLINES: VARY o>6oe ego bird te Mel Wile eee whats 53 


YOUR LESSON 


LETTER PAGE 
DOAN TE: A UBSGONT (6d eles ek elles eC dele eee alte 59 
Ee he aS Die ae Oa A Gua Re NS Se Ea 65 
SD eT eOUORTSOAND LRDDS 2. 6 6 ids bide OS ei ue eels oka ne 66 
Me RIE TING choc tuto hic boise bei rac ieh oo a ote Potala 66 
Pipe DEMMETAT CL MAGES hhc sitet a ek ade lb dk as otha eae Aca 68 
PAP ETVIPURELTEDUENY ORB NSC aU ee ye ho kee hi eal elas ds vats os feee ok Mate Bak oe 69 
Dasa CM ITISEANTIATN TT 0 Poorer ht Song RANT Rrra og etn ep 72 


12 CONTENTS 
YOUR PUPILS > 


LETTER ' PAGE 
80.4}How:A LBARNER LRBARNS OS ey od aier Chie be ee aie ane TL 
OL. LHARNING VERSUS HIOCHOING Fi. LMR aia MN i a 81 
32. How A LEARNER FINISHES THE LEARNING PRocESS .... 82 
BOs (AUX PRESSION AL, ACTIVEDY 305 Wek Mins Wien BOM to ee Curae oy ee 
SAE) MOVEMINE Shee Pe Ty Baia te is Dee ah aes ee 85 
St RETA CTE Cor cian: eke al alee ne EER hare herent 4 86 
36. Interests BEGET INTERESTS ....:. 0.6 26 ee eo es 87 
Qae AITVERTIORS e578 glee Uy eRe gr alk Wai haat Rite a ea 89 
BSH AL WARNING Spo 2 en ae NORE id Se AOS ae ne 90 
DOP ELA BUTS yess Ga eter ea ety ee CL Ngo artes» tai bags is SR NN Bn 90 
ADS TAA NGUAGHIS ii eid bie ee ENE Oe OR Tin EE Nak Ona os a 91 
Aly Tan Diericont ONE Kos UEC lies cok ee ate 91 
AO THe JOY OF DISCOVERY vais. ak eee eel sane ee 92 


LETTER PAGE 
BAS STOO RIS SS Mite Dy SON Mish IN a Gea, ec 97 
44> TRAINING TO DHRVE | itil aul ies, co uee gak ohana ine Se a ater 
EE A OOTIOT YL acces Gaul Cael May ut at NEB pi Lue Mina aa ae a ag UR 
BE SLABS POBTRTE Se) ay aig Ue Tan bok dhe ta oe te or tats Gio 3 Peal ot ee 
AF IVLONBY 0 a ayy fap RoR glee ta eas ae ok eee 101 
48,))' MISSIONARY-MINDEDNESS «| 0.035 Oy CIA aa ee eee 102 
49 RAV IOR AHS ie Ma Rear ane pak icles Mog uel Hing cota ie Nae Rane aed a 103 
BOs WORSHIP 1S A OTT VM si) a sae ian anh lee cick ating ee ete 107 
5D) TRACHING How TO. STUDY. |. fa a eolah ee ee 107 
62.) HOME WORK ah ies ae ie ae ee i ae 108 
Gade MVIABRING We) bi be USE bil oh A ot acre 109 


YOUR SCHOOL 


LETTER PAGE 
54. Tur ScHoou 113 
55. AGUARDIAN ANGELS .°). Oecd a PEE Td hed ee eat eee eee 117 
5G.) | SPONSORS 15 8)'5.) ari ot een) saa ai kt a eee eee etn ae 118 
YOUR CHURCH 
LETTER PAGE 
$7.) tA Taacnina Gaureai ies. oa 0 tet ok Gee ieee ce eee 123 
58. , Tan TmAceine SACRAMENT: ; oa hd eer ae 124 
59; PROGRRSS YS en ne OT Pe i ae koe a ae Ge ae 125 


O02 “ReraGran Ts ACHE ors oy ee TiN ky 126 


CONTENTS 
YOUR READING 


LETTER 


EPA TICE EING ho ce eis hy iim ange Mes eat k ert Shit STUN 
ae VATU Ura Tite VED aay eae YF dye laity Cruel gitar te 
PAAR bre NG Cn ence Ra dCi a a UR a 
wet DUETS Dn] > SMP ORCA ASH ACL IG OS) BC UR CURLING aR ER ee 


YOURSELF 


LETTER 


eNO ARM AN FRTIOT Tul he lum eutalietcg tawny g 


GMA OOS L MACHR i ee im gi Al etcdo teuaacselk lita 
Pee NEE TA DT TRESS Cea ar ake eI ed eee kN A Wital ented 
DU ALAC MEA BIBTOO GAs SMe or uy os enloaluae Va idree aida wig 
PION OUT SAVIOR fii viel atiare eae FM ible ries baci Meal s 
STERILE 2 Cero roe fa ent am LOA eee fetes 
Case RCRA BEA IISEB cy. yer reese Kal pia han ws etelteee e 
FRE OMSL EY hy si as hoe a ce ar hela itelsen ahaa Pra 
ebae SRO We LHIRIBT, Oy ay Pei tat Ce ae ean cal Saiee Wine i 


t¢ 


13 





YOUR JOB 





YOUR JOB 
1 


WHat Is A TEACHER? 


I am impressed by a general failure to understand 
what a teacher of religion is. Many of the mistakes 
that teachers make are due to the fact that although 
they know a good deal about the Bible and personal re- 
ligion, they do not know the answer to the simple ques- 
tion, What is a teacher? And this is really the first 
thing you ought to know. 


2 
A LEADER 


A teacher of religion is a leader. By placing in your 
hands a group of children, the Church commissions 
you to lead them through a series of typical religious 
experiences. You and they are members of the Church. 
But you are older, they younger; you more mature, 
they less. This means that you have had more experi- 
ence than they; and it is by reason of this distinction 
that you are set among them as their leader. The 
typical experiences of the Christian religion are chiefly 
those of worship (public and private), and what we 
call social service or neighborliness, playing the part of 
a brother to our fellowmen. Your task, then, as a 
teacher of Christ’s religion, is to take these particular 
children by the hand and lead them on the adven- 

17 


\ 


18 CREATIVE TEACHING 


tures in worship and neighborliness which constitute 
the Christian life. 

This emphasis on leadership in putting what is . 
taught into practice is comparatively modern. A gen- 
eration or two ago the task of a teacher of religion 
was not conceived in these terms. The teacher of that 
day was expected only to impart facts and ideas, only 
to instruct and exhort. 


3 
Tue Oup IpkA AND THE NEW 


If you would understand in its fulness the contrast 
between the older method and the new, consider the 
old and the new way of constructing a system of 
lessons for Church-school work. Fifty years ago when 
any Church body created a committee to devise 
Sunday-school courses of study, the members of the 
committee came together bringing large sheets of paper 
on which were written the various items of Christian 
Truth to be imparted to the pupils. In their judgment 
their problem was to decide what portion of the total 
should be taught to a child at each stage of his 
development—the Life of Christ in one year, certain 
Old Testament characters in another, the Catechism 
in another, the history of the early Church in another, 
and so on. The entire deposit of Christian Truth had 
to be parcelled out and, as it were, fed to the children 
during their twelve school years. 

In sharp contrast to the older method, such a com- 
mittee today sets to work very differently. The first 
thing it does is to secure as true a description as pos- 
sible of a typical child at each age from six to eighteen. 
What is a normal American six-year-old like? What 


YOUR JOB 19 


are his habits of thought, his mental and physical 
abilities, his spiritual faculties? What are his likes and 
dislikes? What are his characteristic temptations and 
joys and sorrows? How does he spend his days? 
What can he do best? In other words, What is he? 
These questions and others like them the committee 
asks concerning the seven-year-old, the eight-year-old, 
and so on up to eighteen. In other words, they draw 
twelve psychological portraits. 

Having done this they next undertake to describe 
the normal religion of a typical child at each age. 
What does it mean, for instance, to be religious at the 
age of six? How does a six-year-old boy who is a con- 
scious disciple of Christ differ from a six-year-old boy 
who is not aware of any personal relationship to Him? 
What does a six-year-old boy do to show his religion? 
What are his typical religious experiences? What does 
he give’ and what receive in a congregation where he 
engages in public worship, and in private when he says 
his prayers at night? What is God like to a six-year- 
old? What is conscience to him? What to him are 
neighborliness, sacrifice, service, loyalty? The same 
questions and others like them the committee asks in 
relation to the seven-year-old, the eight-year-old, and 
each year up to eighteen. 

As you can well imagine, it requires a great deal of 
study and investigation to obtain reliable answers to 
these questions. The trained psychologist is called on 
for help, and even the physiologist, as well as the 
student of religion. Sometimes it takes a committee 
on courses of study as much as five or six years to 
secure a reliable and impartial description of whole- 
some, cheerful, intelligent religion at each of the twelve 
years from six to eighteen. 


\ 


20 CREATIVE TEACHING 


4 
Your BIsLe 


Let us assume that our committee on courses of 
study has done the preliminary work described in my 
last letter. What does it do next? It says, “We know 
how the ten-year-old child who is to enjoy religious 
good health should live. We know what we want him 
to experience. We know how we want him to express 
his loyalty to Christ. We have a definite notion of 
what he ought to be doing in his worship of God and 
in the service of his fellowmen. Let us now look in 
the Bible to see if somewhere between its covers we 
can find stories, parables, songs, letters, chapters of 
history, sermons, or other passages which if understood 
and enjoyed by this ten-year-old will have the 
tendency to make him want to be and do those things 
which constitute the Christian religious life at his age.” 

Whatever the committee succeeds in finding in the 
Bible which meets this test, it puts into its course of 
study for the ten-year-old child. But if it cannot find 
all that it needs there it must seek elsewhere. In other 
words, the Bible is used not so much for its own sake 
as because of its power to affect the lives of the chil- 
dren in question. We do not teach the parable of the 
Good Samaritan because it is in the Bible: we teach 
it because it 1s the best of all stories for strengthening 
the impulse to neighborliness and for preventing the 
formation of artificial barriers between class and class. 
The story has proven effective in changing lives. It 
tends to build up good habits of thought and action. 
That is why we use it. The committee finds that the 
Bible contains more material that is good (in this 


YOUR JOB 21 


sense of the word) than any other collection of religious 
writings in the world. It meets the test of experience. 
It works. But we do not confine our lesson-material to 
it altogether, for we find by applying the same test to 
other and later writings that God reveals Himself 
through them also. 

5 


Your Manuvat or LESSON QUARTERLY 


Coming back now to our original statement, I think 
you may be able to see more clearly than before what 
I mean when I say that a teacher of religion must be 
a leader. Specialists have determined what, on the 
whole, your class of ten-year-old children ought to be 
doing this year in the way of religion. This conviction 
they have expressed in extended form in your Manual 
or Lesson Quarterly, which they place in your hands 
very much as a chart and compass are placed in the 
hands of a sea captain. ‘This is the way,” they say, 
“in which ten-year-olds should go. Here are passages 
of sacred literature for study and conference which we 
think will tend to set them in motion in that direction. 
With the Holy Spirit as your chief Guide, and this ma- 
terial as an aid, take these children and lead them into 
a life where they may follow the example of their 
Saviour Christ and be made like unto Him.” 


6 


THEIR Own RELIGION 


¥ You must lead your pupils to live their own religious 
life and not yours. You must let them have their 
own experience of God and not yours. Remember 
that there 2s such a thing as a ten-year-old religion. 


\ 


22 CREATIVE TEACHING 


There is also such a thing as a twelve-year-old and a 
thirteen-year-old religion, and so on all the way up and 
down the line. The religion of ten-year-olds will not | 
be the same as yours. Of course it goes by the same 
name and has the same central ideas. Theirs is the 
Christian religion and so is yours. But their way of 
expressing it must be different from your way if both | 
are to be genuine. Never try to lead them into a twen- 
ty-five-year-old religious experience. In other words, 


study them more than yourself, more even than the 
Bible. 


O Almighty God, who hast inspired thy 
Church through the teaching of thy holy 
Apostles; Grant that standing fast in the unity 
of the faith we may all come unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ; to 
whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all 
honour and glory, both now and for evermore. 


7 
A SPIRITUAL PARENT 


As the religious teacher of children you must aim to 
be their spiritual parent. This will mean that you will 
not dismiss them from your mind when the closing 
bell rings on Sunday. It means that you carry them 
on your mint and in your heart during the entire 
week and throughout the year. The attitude of every 
man toward his class in the Church school should have 
in it something paternal, and that of every woman 
something maternal. You must be greatly concerned 
for the spiritual welfare of your pupils. If one of them 
should encounter a major crisis, like a bereavement 


YOUR JOB 23 


or serious illness, be one of the first persons on the 
spot. Drop everything and go immediately to his home 
and stand by him in his trouble. More than anything 
which you may be able to do in the way of rendering 
tangible help, your presence there will be eloquent. 
The child will know that you are to him in spiritual 
matters something very like a parent. 

The fact that a parental attitude is necessary when 
you are trying to lead children into the religious experi- 
ences appropriate to their age is one main reason 
why we do not place a girl of seventeen in charge of 
girls of, say, fifteen. A superintendent who made such 
an assignment would show that he failed to under- 
stand the true nature of the work of teaching religion. 
+ Religion is not a topic, but a life. You teach it not 
by explaining it but by imparting it. In a sense it 
is almost wrong to speak of “teaching” religion at all. 
You do not so much teach it as cause it to grow in the 
lives of your pupils. If religion were simply a topic, 
like algebra or history, teaching it would be a merely 
mental process. On this assumption it might be 
proper to have a seventeen-year-old girl teach fifteen- 
year-olds, or even girls of sixteen. In fact she could 
manage a class her own age by keeping a week ahead 
of them in the knowledge contained in the textbook. 
She would only need to be bright, and keen to share 
her knowledge with others. But the whole situation 
changes when we realize that religion is not a topic 
but a life; for no one can maintain toward pupils only 
two years younger an attitude that could be called 
parental. Girls in their ’teens, no doubt, have a par- 
ental feeling toward kindergarten children, and it is 
these only whom they should assist in teaching. 


/ 


24 CREATIVE TEACHING 


O God, our heavenly Father, who hast © 
blessed us with the joy and care of children; 
Give us light and strength so to train them, 
that they may love whatsoever things are true, 
and pure, and lovely, and of good report; fol- 
lowing the example of their Saviour, Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 


8 
A FRIEND 


As a teacher of religion to your pupils you must be 
their friend. You may say at once that this idea is 
already contained in that of spiritual parenthood. It 
is in a way, yet friendship includes certain other ele- 
ments. It is possible to be the parent of a child and 
not his friend. Not infrequently a man or woman ful- 
fills most of the duties of parenthood without ever 
really meeting the child in comradeship through 
games and those other phases of life where friendship 
grows. | 

What, after all, is a friend? Perhaps there is no 
better definition than the one given by a school boy 
who said, “A friend is a person who knows all about 
you and still likes you.” 

*You must know all about your pupils. This is es- — 
sential because as their teacher of religion it is your 
business to set at work influences that will change 
their lives for the better, give them the power of God, 
and make Christ live in them. Inside knowledge is 
therefore one of the essentials to the right performance 
of your work. It is not an extra part. You must 
know all about them. But what, in detail, does this | 
mean? What must you know? 

You must know the games they play. Play is one 


YOUR JOB 25 


of the golden keys to the life and character of a child. 
It will not be enough to know the names of their 
favorite games, you must know how to play them. 
Have you ever played what they play? If not, you 
may perhaps be able to learn. But if the character of 
a game is such that you cannot play it, then be sure 
that you watch it played until you really understand 
it. For play, to a child, is not something frivolous or 
incidental. It is not a pastime. It is one of the most 
important things in his life. You never heard a six- 
year-old boy speak lightly of his railroad tracks and 
train of cars, or a fourteen-year-old speak carelessly of 
his football team. So you must know all about the 
games your children play. Are they playing games 
which they ought not to be playing? (Some are 
against the law.) If so, you certainly ought to know 
about it, for the games which they play are their very 
life. “You must know about them so that your lan- 
guage and illustrations and ideas may be taken from 
that same world. You cannot influence them until 
you meet them, and you cannot meet them unless you 
move mentally on the plane where they are living. 


9 
LIKES AND DISLIKES 


You must know your pupils’ likes and dislikes. This 
is another key. In a class of girls, one will like sewing 
and reading, another athletics and reading, another 
will dislike reading but enjoy nature-study and the 
theater, and soon. These things you must know. One 
of the indications of the excellence of the teaching in 
a class which I was visiting the other day was that the 
teacher, while telling a story, paused a moment in the 


Ul 


26 CREATIVE TEACHING 


middle of it and catching the eye of one of the pupils, 
said, “You would like that, wouldn’t you, Tom?” 
Tom smiled back without saying anything, and the 
story proceeded. ‘The interruption took only a sec- 
ond. The point is that the teacher knew the likes and 
the dislikes of her pupils, and was on really friendly 
terms with them individually. I have heard that she 
influences strongly the lives of the children in her 
class. 
10 


HoMESs 


You must know something about their family life. 
You will have to do something more than call at the 
home of each child once during the school year. You 
will not know all that you should about any pupil of 
yours until you can see in your mind’s eye a picture of 
the interior of his home. You must have an idea of . 
the temper of his family life; the personal standards of 
his parents; the books they read; the pictures on the 
wall; and the general character of the family interests 
and routine. | 

11 


FRIENDLINESS 


Probably you will not be able to visit the pupils in 
their homes as much as you would like. Here is one 
opportunity, however, to supplement this visiting, 
which you ought not to neglect. 

Arrive at the place where your class meets at least 
ten or fifteen minutes before the opening hour. There 
will be plenty of things to attend to: writing something 
on the blackboard possibly, or putting up one or two 
pictures for the day, or other similar arrangements. If 


YOUR JOB 27 


you make this a regular practice you will find that 
some of your pupils will begin to come a little early, 
too. Naturally they will help you with your work, 
and thus a very fruitful companionship will grow up 
between you. At these times you will come to know 
individual pupils much better than you could if you 
met them only during the more formal class hour. 
You can find out many things about them which you 
would not care to talk over before the whole class. If 
the lesson hour comes after instead of before the 
Church service, you can probably make the same op- 
portunity at the close instead of at the opening of the 
lesson period. 

At all events miss no chance to talk with your pupils 
informally as a friend. 


12 
Day SCHOOL AND READING 


You must know what your pupils are doing in their 
day school. I know of a certain room in one parish 
house that contains a wall of book-shelves holding all 
the textbooks used in the public schools, grade by 
grade. Here are found the current textbooks on 
geography, history, literature, and other subjects which 
school children study: The Church-school teacher who 
has a class of eighth-grade children visits this room 
occasionally and looks over the eighth-grade books, 
and so with the other grades. 

By consulting one or two of the day-school teachers 
and securing from them their annual lesson schedules 
it is a simple matter to find out what the pupils of 
your class in Church school are occupying their minds 
with during the week. If you will get hold of one or 


98 CREATIVE TEACHING 


two things that they have been learning recently 
you will find that in the lesson in religion for the 
day you can frequently make cross-references to the 
weekday lessons. It is a good thing for your pupils 
to realize that you are conversant with their day-school 
work. If you find out that during the past month 
your pupils, studying Greek history, have seen pic- 
tures of Corinth, it will be a simple matter for you to 
draw information from them on the subject of Corinth 
before you tell them about St. Paul’s letter to the 
Christians of that city. The further you proceed in 
your work the more will these illustrations and eross- 
references abound. 

The main reason for making these cross-references 
is not to make your teaching more interesting, but that — 
the pupils may come ‘to understand that God’s crea- 
tion is all of a piece, and that His truth is a unit. 
Strictly speaking there are no secular subjects and no ~ 
secular schools. All knowledge is sacred. All truth is 
of God. The laws of mathematics and history and 
chemistry as they are learned in day school are simply 
descriptions of the way things happen; and they 
happen that way because God made them so. Your 
business as a Church-school teacher is not to teach a 
separate subject, but to help children interpret all 
subjects. Incidentally you will find that your pupils 
will become much more truly your friends if you can 
talk with them easily in terms of their day-school 
experiences as well as in terms of their prayer life 
and their play life. 

I have mentioned a few of the outstanding fai 
about your pupils which you ought to know, but I have 
not by any means exhausted the list. Many other 
things you will think of yourself. One can really say 


YOUR JOB 29 


that you ought to know everything about them. Be- 
fore I leave this subject, however, let me remind you 
of certain specific things that you need to know about 
their physical and mental equipment. Is one of them 
weak in eyesight? Is one of them hard of hearing? 
Has one of them an unusually slow, though perfectly 
sound, mind? Is one of them undernourished? It is 
a great injustice to a child with a slight defect of which 
the teacher is not aware, to treat him as if he were 
either lazy or stupid. 


13 
Wuy Know So Many Tuincs? 


The reason for knowing so many things about your 
pupils is not, as commonly supposed, that you may 
supply yourself with a bagful of apt illustrations, or 
that you may be furnished with what pedagogical ex- 
perts call “points of contact” to make your teaching 
bright and colorful and concrete. All these minor 
reasons are good enough as far as they go. But the 
more real and deeper reason for knowing these things 
is that they are the very stuff of which the pupil’s 
every-day life is made, and it is precisely that life 
which a teacher of religion aims to influence. 

It was undoubtedly in obedience to this principle 
that Jesus, the greatest Teacher, filled His sermons and | 
discourses with homely references to field and garden, 
fishing-boat and kitchen. Perhaps you have been 
thinking of these as pretty figures of speech, or quaint 
old-world analogies. But they were nothing of the 
sort. There is nothing quaint to a fisherman about 
fish or to a shepherd about sheep. To a sower of 
seed there is nothing pretty or far away about sowing 


‘ 


30 CREATIVE TEACHING 


or reaping or seed. Our Lord addressed His words — 
to fishermen, artisans, and housekeepers, and got 
His teaching understood by references to their daily 
business. He did this because it was their daily life 
that He wanted to affect. He wanted to make the 
fishermen honest and brotherly fishermen; the farmers 
just and merciful farmers; and the housekeepers 
generous and thoughtful housekeepers. It may be a 
rather shocking thought, but I suppose a true one, that 
if Christ came in human form to us today He would 
talk to our industrial laborers about machine-shops 
and factories, and about vacuum-cleaners, automobiles, 
and newspapers to all of us. 


“He spake of lilies, vines, and corn, 
The sparrow and the raven, 7 

And words so natural yet so wise _ 
Were on men’s hearts engraven. 


“And yeast and bread and flax and cloth 
And eggs and fish and candles— 

See how the most familiar word 
He most divinely handles!’ 


“Christ was always in the thick of life. He dealt 
with beating hearts, active wills, current deeds, vital 
states. He kept to things in easy reach. 

“To show God’s care He points to flowers. To 
show God’s grace He heals the blind. To teach 
humility He points to a blushing child. To show a 
miser’s folly He talks of barns and feasts and lazi- 
ness. To show fraternity He eats with publicans. 

. . To intimate the fitness and potency of prayer 
He points to a hungry boy. To show how honor may 
shine in lowly deeds He washes His followers’ feet. 


1 Quoted by G. A. Barton in his book Jesus of Nazareth. Mac- 
millan. 


YOUR JOB 31 


“See His parables. Now they paint a king, now 
a sheep, now a vine, now a debtor, now a marriage 
feast, now an ox, now a band of angels, now a hum- 
ble herdsman, now a house rock-fast, now a traveler 
in distress. 

“He always keeps in touch with things in easy 
sight. And yet He is never shallow. Here is prime 
counsel for all who teach. Christ could be both vivid 
and profound—a twinship none too common in the 
teaching realm. . . . He was a supreme inter- 
preter. He could make familiar, things that men 
thought strange. He could show that distant things 
stand near; that transcendent things lie within our 
range; that common things are precious; that humble 
things can be sublime; that each day’s hues are 
heavenly; that every man is God-like,”’ ? 


14 
LIKING 


You remember the boy’s definition of a friend as 
being a person who knows all about you and still likes 
you. I have been enlarging on the first part of it, 
that is, knowing all about your pupils. 

The second half is equally important. Do you 
realize that it is part of your work to lke every child 
in your class? This is not always easy. There will 
be the popular child, and the attractive one, and the 
one who happens to “hit it off’ with you and appeal 
to your instinctive interest and affection. But there 
may be at least one in your class whom you find ‘it 
difficult to like. You may think that if there is only 
one such out of eight or ten, you are doing pretty 


1 Teacher-training with the Master Teacher, by C. S. Beardslee. 
The S. S. Times Co. 


32 CREATIVE TEACHING 


well. Eighty or ninety per cent success is considered 
very good in most undertakings. It would be good 
in business. But in the matter of liking the pupils of 
your class anything short of one hundred per cent is 
tragic. For this is a spiritual and not a commercial 
enterprise. To try to be the leader and spiritual par- 
ent and friend of a child without learning to like him 
would create a very abnormal situation. 

There are no rules for learning to like a person. You 
will have to resort to prayer and the grace of God 
and the will to like him. The only reason why I men- 
tion this at all is to warn you against a feeling of satis- 
faction if you find yourself liking all but one or two 
of your pupils. I realize that I am setting before you 
an ideal; but if I were not, what would be the use of 
writing to you at all? | 


O God, day by day lead me deeper into the 
mystery of life, and make me an interpreter of 
life to thy children; through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 


1H. S. Nash. 


YOUR PREPARATION 


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YOUR PREPARATION 


15 
TooLs 


You have asked me how you ought to set about 
preparing a lesson. Let us suppose that next Sunday 
you will have to teach the lesson for the day to a class 
of eight boys. 

Two hours is the minimum length of time which 
you ought to allow yourself for the preparation. As 
you get more and more interested in your pupils and 
in your subject undoubtedly you will often work longer 
than two hours. Let that be your minimum. It may 
be necessary occasionally to set aside two separate one- 
hour periods. This plan is not so good as doing two 
hours’ work at one sitting, but it is sometimes more 
feasible. 

It will probably help you to set aside a certain day 
each week, and the same hours on that day. Perhaps 
you will decide on Tuesdays from 7 to 9 o’clock in 
the evening, or possibly some morning regularly. The 
point is that if you settle upon a regular time it very 
soon becomes a part of your routine, and the other 
members of the household respect it and adjust them- 
selves to it. Your friends and acquaintances will come 
to regard you as “hopeless” during those two hours on 
that particular day of each week. This is as it should 
be. Incidentally it increases their respect for the 

35 


36 CREATIVE TEACHING 


work in which you are engaged, and. perhaps for re- 
ligion and the Church. 

You must have a quiet place where the sienen 
ings and atmosphere are conducive to concentration 
and study. You cannot properly prepare a lesson 
where other people are conversing, or where a radio 
or sewing-machine or victrola is active. Possibly 
your own room will prove to be the best place. On — 
the other hand it may be necessary for you to seek 
the official silence of the public library. Many teachers 
prefer this even to the best possible room at home. 
There is an air of earnestness and purpose, and you 
are surrounded by all the reference-books, Pi 
and maps that you can possibly use. 

What books and materials should you take for the 
preparation of an approaching lesson? First of all, 
the Bible. I mean the whole Bible, containing both | 
Testaments and not omitting the wonderful books of — 
the Apocrypha. It makes no difference what course 
you happen to be teaching. It may be the life of our 
Lord, or Old Testament heroes, or Christian ethics, or 
Church history, or Missions. Whatever it is, you need 
the Bible at your elbow when you prepare a lesson. 
If you do not feel the need of the Bible there is some- 
thing wrong with you; the trouble is not with the ~ 
Bible. 

In the second place, take your Prayer Book. No 
matter what subject you are teaching you will need 
this, and if you do not feel the need of it there is 
something wrong with you and not with the book. 
The reason why you need it I will explain more fully 
when I write of your opportunity and duty as a guide 
in the devotional life of your pupils.’ All I need say 

* Letters 49 and 50. 


YOUR PREPARATION 37 


here is that the boys in your class go to Church and 
participate in public worship, that this is one of their 
main experiences in religion, that you are their leader 
in religious experience, and that therefore you will 
naturally find opportunities in your Sunday lessons 
for cross-reference to these experiences of public 
worship. | 

In the next place take your Hymnal. The same 
reasons for taking the Prayer Book apply to taking 
the Hymnal. Incidentally, much of the memory-work 
of your class will be found in both’ these books as well 
as in the Bible. 

Naturally you will take your teacher’s Manual or 
Lesson Quarterly, for this is your special guide-book. 
It tells you with some detail what to do week by week 
and month by month. The time of lesson-preparation 
is precisely the time when you need this book. 

You.should have also whatever reference-book the 
Manual or Lesson Quarterly requires. Nowadays most 
Sunday-school guides prescribe at least one reference- 
book in the course of a year for parallel reading. Some- 
times the reference will be to a single chapter, or per- 
haps a dozen pages, for a given lesson. These 
reference-books, together with all the other educational 
tools of your course, your parish provides for you at 
its own expense. 

When a parish gives you a group of boys or girls 
to teach, it places upon you a very solemn responsi- 
bility and elevates you to the highest lay position in 
parish life. The service of teaching is the most sacred 
of the lay ministries. It is also an exceedingly difficult 
task, making heavy drains on ingenuity and spiritual 


1In some cases the Services of Public Worship and the Hymns 
form two parts of a single book. 


38 CREATIVE TEACHING 


power. The parish which places this responsibility 
upon anyone, therefore, naturally gives him every aid 
and encouragement. The least that it can do is to 
place in the teacher’s hands every possible help in the 
way of educational tools. These include a textbook, 
a quarterly or manual, the reference-books to which 
the manual refers, and whatever other paraphernalia is 
necessary in teaching the particular course and group 
in question. In providing these minimum things at its 
own expense the parish is not generous, it is merely 
just. 

You should also take with you one complete outfit 
of the pupil’s material. This will vary from grade to 
grade. It may include a small textbook, a question- 
and-answer notebook, and a set of pictures; perhaps 
more, perhaps less. Whatever it is, you should have 
one set by your side in the work of preparation. If 
there are eight boys in your class the parish must pro- _ 
vide you with nine pupils’ outfits, the ninth being for 
your personal use. This you take with you for your 
preparation because whatever work you assign to your 
boys next Sunday, whether reading or writing or any- 
thing else, you should first do yourself; and the time 
to do it is while you are preparing your lesson. 

Never set your pupils any task which you have not | 
already done yourself. ‘There are several reasons for 
this. One is that it enables you to gauge the difficulty 
of the task. You may find on trial that what the — 
Manual or Lesson Quarterly suggests for an assign- 
ment is too easy for your boys. You know these boys, 
and the editor of the Quarterly does not. If the assign- 
ment is too easy you must lengthen it. Or you may 
find that it is too hard, and then you will have to 
shorten it. Furthermore, you may discover a misprint 
in the pupils’ material. This is not infrequent. It is 


YOUR PREPARATION 39 


better for you to discover it first than leave it for the 
boys to find. You can then have them correct it when 
you make the assignment. But the most important 
reason for your doing the pupils’ work is that it places 
you and them on a plane of mutual understanding and 
comradeship. They know that you know what it feels 
like to do the work.t. They also know that they can 
examine your notebook as a model. They respect you 
for being able to do well what they themselves are try- 
ing to do well. It makes them feel that you are play- 
ing fair, and this attitude alone is worth all the trouble 
involved. 

Finally, take your pen and a blank notebook. This 
notebook may be of the loose-leaf variety, or bound, 
and will probably be of standard size. The important 
thing is that it should suit you. Let it be the kind 
you like—any shape, any size, any color. But let it be 
a good one that will stand wear, and worthy of your 
best work. 

You will see that this is quite an armful: Bible, 
Prayer Book, Hymnal, Manual or Lesson Quarterly, 
reference-book, pupil’s equipment, notebook. Seven 
tools! But after all, the important question is not, 
How many tools? but, What does your task require of 
you? 

16 


PRAYER 


Having arrived at the quiet place where the atmos- 
phere of study prevails, with two hours at your dis- 
posal, and having deposited these books and materials 
on a convenient and comfortable table, what do you 
do first? 


Pray. You cannot begin this task of lesson-prepara- 
1 Letter 51. 


40 CREATIVE TEACHING 


tion without first seeking God’s special help. That is, 
you cannot do so if you rightly interpret the nature 
of the work. People who undertake the preparation 
of a lesson without prayer are not irreligious or lack- 
ing in piety; what they lack is an understanding of 
the nature of the Church-school teacher’s business. 

Consider for a moment what is going to happen next 
Sunday. These boys will come into the Church school 
and sit in a group under your leadership. They will 
be there just forty minutes. Forty minutes once a 
week, and only for about thirty-five weeks out of the 
fifty-two! A little mental arithmetic will show you 
what a small fraction of their waking hours, in the 
course of a year, is spent in learning about their re- 
ligion. Contrast this with the other influences that 
pour into their lives. The influence of their homes is 
continuous. It is daily. The opportunity of the pub- 
lic school extends perhaps over an even greater number 
of hours per day, but its influence, even so, may be ~ 
less powerful than the home influence. Then there are 
the playground, the street, the movie, the magazine, 
the gang, and the other factors that constitute what. 
the boys call “regular life.” 

Against this large array of agencies occupying prac- 
tically the entire time of these boys, your chance lasts _ 
forty minutes every seven days, perhaps thirty-five 
times a year. How precious those moments become 
when seen in this perspective! They are more than 
precious—they are critical. In the course of a year 
you are allowed to make thirty-five impressions on 
these boys. As a Christian warrior, the sword of the 
Spirit which is the word of God is placed in your hands, 
and the Church bids you wield thirty-five strokes for 
the kingdom of God. Each time you meet your class 


- YOUR PREPARATION 41 


is a crisis. It is an experience for the boys which is 
so rare as to be almost unique. Everything depends 
upon how you acquit yourself, how you conduct the 
class. If you do nobly you will put into the lives of 
eight boys the impetus of thirty-five impulses toward 
loyalty to Christ. You will bring their souls into touch 
with a power which in the day of trial may just save 
them from calamity. 

On the other hand, if you manage the class badly 
through lack of preparation, if you stumble aimlessly 
through the forty minutes, if your work lacks purpose 
and intelligence and you lack poise, if you are nervous 
or distracted, or even only lazy and vague, you will not — 
only lose your opportunity, but, worse still, you may 
do positive harm. I mean that by your carelessness 
and poor workmankship you will say to them, in deeds 
which speak louder than words, that the whole enter- 
prise known as the Christian religion is of so little 
account that it does not win the enthusiasm and kindle 
the best efforts of an adult who teaches it. 

Remember that the boy makes the comparison be- 
tween his day-school teacher and his Sunday-school 
teacher. In the day school he finds himself in an 
institution where everything is well planned and mi- 
nutely prepared. The teacher is held responsible to 
someone higher in authority who in turn is respon- 
sible to someone else. She knows her business. Her » 
work commands respect. Her purposefulness and con- 
secration and efficiency confer prestige upon her. The 
boy feels all this and responds to it. He respects the 
subjects taught by her because he sees that grown-ups 
prove by their works that they consider them impor- 
tant. He says, “Mathematics and literature and geog- 
raphy are such important subjects that my grown 


42 CREATIVE TEACHING 


people get me up a first-class school in which to learn 
them, a school that means business, where good work 
is rewarded and bad work penalized.” Imagine then 
what happens when the same boy, having gone to Sun- 
day school, adds, “But religion is so unimportant in 
the eyes of grown people that they do not bother to 
get me up a real school in which to learn it. They 
only give me a makeshift. Nothing seems to matter 
there. It is a joke.” | 

In other words, by observing the contrast between 
the attitude of the men and women of the Church to- 
ward education in reading, writing, and arithmetic 
and their attitude toward religious education, the boy 
draws the inference that Christ’s religion must be a 
matter of little consequence. | 

It is a great mistake to suppose that a Sunday 
school is sure to do good just because it is a Sunday 
school. It is the easiest thing in the world for such a 
school to do harm. Carrying on a Sunday school at 
all is a very dangerous thing for a parish to do. It is 
a necessary thing to try, and done right it is very 
glorious. Like most glorious things, however, it is 
dangerous. It is dangerous because it is sure to wield 
a strong influence either for good or bad, just as physi- 
cal force is bound to be either constructive or destruc- - 
tive. Looking at the same problem more narrowly as 
it applies to the teacher instead of the school, you will 
see that neither does a teacher of religion necessarily do 
good. He does either good or harm, according to 
the way he behaves. Your boys, for instance, are 
coming to you next Sunday. You cannot “turn 
off” your influence on a given Sunday because you do 
not feel up to your task, for whenever people meet 
together the forces of influence are brought into play 


YOUR PREPARATION 43 


even if no words are spoken. Influence them you must 
next Sunday, whether you wish to or not. The only 
question is whether you will influence them in the 
direction of Christ-likeness or in some other direction. 

Therefore you must make sure that you are fit. You 
cannot do this work without God’s help. Ask Him to 
help you to lift these boys nearer to Him, so that they 
may receive His power and the touch of His spirit. Do 
not pray for childhood in general, but think of each 
one of these boys personally and individually; call 
each one by name, and beseech God to give you the 
strength and skill to help each one in the way that he 
most needs help. When you have done this you will 
be ready to go on with the work of preparing the ap- 
proaching lesson. 


Teach us, O gracious Lord, to begin our 
works with fear, to continue them in love, and 
to finish them with hope; looking with cheer- 
ful confidence unto thee, whose promises are 
faithful, and whose mercies endure for ever- 
more; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


17 
READING 


First, open your Teacher’s Manual or Lesson Quar- 
terly and read the chapter that explains the coming 
lesson; read it through from beginning to end without 
pausing to make notes or to draw up plans in your 
mind. Read not only your textbook, but also whatever 
references it tells you to consult. This will probably 
include a passage or two from the Bible and a dozen 
pages from the required reference-book. You may 
have to read this matter twice. One reading suffices 
for some people, and others need two. This does not 


44. CREATIVE TEACHING 


mean that the second type of person is less bright than 
the first but simply that there are two distinct types 
of mind, equally useful, of which one retains the sub- ’ 
stance of a chapter after a single reading while the 
other requires two. Find out which type of mind you 
have, and act accordingly. 

While you are doing this reading keep yourself in a 
receptive frame of mind; let the story, or character- 
sketch, or poem, or chapter of history sink into your 
understanding. If it is familiar, possibly repetition has - 
dulled the edge of its interest and you have become 
callous to its beauty and force. Then use your 
imagination and pretend that you have never heard it 
before. Let. its true unconventionality surprise you; 
let its vigor stir and refresh you; let its mystery 
awaken in you burning thoughts and searching ques- 
tions. Remember that when this story first burst upon 
the world it was startingly informal, vigorous, and 
fresh. 

A few years ago a Japanese at the age of twenty 
came for the first time in contact with the four Gos- 
pels. He read the account through, then turned back 
to the first page and read it through again, and then 
once more, before he put it down. He was thrilled and 
shocked and amazed to learn that such words could | 
have been spoken and such deeds done. ‘Try to feel 
the way this man felt when you read over the lesson- 
material for next Sunday. 


O God, whose only Son opened unto his 
disciples the Scriptures, making their hearts to ~ 
burn within them; Inflame our hearts, we be- 
seech thee, with such devotion to thee, that we 
may know thee as thou art; through the same, 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 


YOUR PREPARATION 45 


18 
Your Aim 


The next thing to do is to choose a definite aim for 
the meeting of your class next Sunday. That 1s, you 
must decide precisely what you wish to accomplish in 
the experience of those particular pupils on that par- 
ticular day. What do you want that forty-minute 
period to mean in their lives? What are you going to 
make it your aim to do for them? 

In the technical parlance of education the word 
“aim” means, What you propose to do to your pupils. 
Here are some aims that have been used by teachers on 
various Sundays: To make these boys more generous. 
To make them more loyal to Christ. To make them 
worship with more intelligence. To awaken in them 
more moral courage. 

Now you see what I mean by saying that your next 
step is to choose a specific aim for the lesson that you 
are preparing. If you will look in your Manual or 
Lesson Quarterly at the beginning of the chapter or 
lesson for the day you will probably find that an “Aim” 
has been suggested by the editor. By a singular coin- 
cidence his aim may happen to be identical with your 
chosen purpose for these pupils next Sunday. In that 
case you will adopt it as your own. This, however, will 
not usually happen, nor is this fact any reflection upon 
the editor or author of the book. It simply means that 
he does not know personally Henry and John and Tom 
and Richard, the boys in your class. You do know 
these boys. It is your special business to know them 
well. You know what they need, what their special 
weaknesses are, what their enthusiasms are, and their 


46 CREATIVE TEACHING 


interests, and their spiritual gifts. Setting this knowl- 
edge and the lesson material side by side, the final 
responsibility rests upon you to decide what the ‘“‘aim”’ 
(in the technical sense) shall be of your next Sunday’s 
work. It may take you fifteen minutes or more to 
think this out and select the best possible aim. Fif- 
teen minutes thus spent is well spent. When you have 
made your decision, write it in your notebook at the 
top of the page reserved for that particular lesson. 


19 


AIMS 


I have said that in the field of education the word 
“aim” has a special or technical meaning. It refers to 
the formative influence that you are trying to exert on 


‘your pupils, the changes that you are trying to bring 


about in their characters or attitudes or feelings. 
Whatever it is that you desire to do to them is, tech- 
nically speaking, your aim. Every lesson is supposed 
to have an aim in this sense of the word. 

Similarly, you will have an aim for your year’s work 
which will be more inclusive than the aim for a lesson. 
Carrying this scheme higher you will see that there 


is a general aim for the entire Church school; one 


for religious education as a whole; and indeed one for 
education as a whole. 

Returning to the foot of the ladder, I think you will 
understand what is meant when educators say that by 
its aim every lesson you teach must contribute toward 
the total aim of your year’s course, and that the year’s 
course must have an aim that will contribute toward 
the total aim of the school, which in turn must con- 
tribute toward the accepted aim of all religious educa- 


ee - 


- YOUR PREPARATION 47 


tion. In some public-school systems this “theory of 
aims” is so carefully worked out that a supervisor who 
visits your class makes a record of what you are doing 
in order to meet you afterward and challenge you to 
defend your practice in terms of the aim which you had 
chosen for that lesson, challenging you further to de- 
fend that aim in terms of the year’s aim, and so on. 

This whole idea of educational aims, though it can 
be carried too far and made too mechanical, embodies 
a very sound principle. It keeps before our minds the 
fact that it is the children that we are supposed to 
teach and help. (This warning is popularly expressed 
in the epigram, “You are here not to teach a book but 
to teach children.”’) Never lose sight of the fact that 
the main business of the teacher of religion is to in- 
fluence lives. 

Another reason why the emphasis on aims is good 
for you,js that it guards you against the sin of aimless- 
ness. More teaching is hurt by aimlessness than by 
almost any other defect. Class after class that I have 
visited was suffering from this malady. I have been in 
classrooms where the teacher had a pleasing per- 
sonality, plenty of intelligence, a good book, and an in- 
teresting subject, but where all of these advantages 
went for nought because the teacher was not aiming 
at anything particular, and the class drifted like a ship 
without a rudder. 

20 


WRITING 


When you have done the necessary reading and pre- 
liminary thinking and have selected your “aim,” open 
your notebook to a blank page and write out your 
lesson-outline or teaching plan. This written outline 


48 CREATIVE TEACHING 


is the crucial and final step in your lesson-prepara- 
tion. By an outline I mean a skeleton program indi- 
eating just how you expect your class to spend its 
forty-minute period next Sunday under your guid- 
ance. It is a forty-minute time-table of the activi- 
ties of the group of which you are the leader. It 
resembles the order of business of a meeting of a club 
or committee. It should include everything that is 
to take place in your classroom—not only the mental 
work, but the other features also. 

I am sorry to say that some teachers, with uncon- 
scious humor, entertain the idea that they are sup- 
posed to conduct the lesson as laid down in the text- 
book or Lesson Quarterly. Nothing could be further 
from the intention of its author. What is labeled 
“Lesson 12” in your Manual may be compared to a 
mine. Into it you are supposed to delve. You are 
expected to discard what you cannot use to the benefit 
of your particular pupils, and to keep only what to 
them will be “gold,” hammering it into a form suited 
to their needs. You will also put in, as all goldsmiths 
do, other material not contained in the original ore. 
It is the alloy added to pure gold that makes it strong 
enough and pliable enough for use. The alloy in your 
case may be some anecdote or illustrations drawn from 
your own experience or from your reading; some refer- 
ence to an event in the life of your parish or your 
town; a reference to an approaching holiday; or other 
matter of this kind which no editor of a textbook could 
possibly provide. 

For your job next Sunday is intensely local, concrete, 
and specific. It concerns a certain handful of boys in- 
habiting one little spot on the map, and it falls on a 
particular date in a particular year. But the men who 





YOUR PREPARATION 49 


compiled your book had to consider not specific pupils, 
but the generality of children; not one town but the 
United States; moreover, they wanted the book to last 
at least a decade, and therefore could not fix their at- 
tention too concretely on any given year of grace. I 
am sure that you begin to see now that what will give 
your lesson color and a tingling sense of reality are the 
things that you will personally add. | 

If you get the measles and send for a doctor, what 
you want of him is not a book on “The Treatment and 
Cure of Measles,” but a prescription. Of course you 
want him to know everything about the treatment and 
cure of measles, but you pay him to reduce this knowl- 
edge to the one prescription that fits your case. When 
you wish to go to Washington you visit the railroad 
Information Bureau and expect to receive a time-table, 
not a treatise on “American Trains and Their Habits.” 
Yet you want the railroad official to know those other 
thousands of facts which for the moment you care 
nothing about. Otherwise you would not care to de- 
pend upon him for the particular facts that bear on 
your proposed journey. 

The difference between the printed Manual or Les- 
son Quarterly and a teacher’s original outline for her 
own particular pupils is a good deal the same. Your 
Manual is like the book on the treatment of measles, 
or the treatise on American trains. Your outline cor- 
responds to the prescription or the time-table. It con- 
cerns itself with a particular group of boys and with 
the special contingency which will take place in your 
classroom next Sunday. 

These are a few of the many good reasons why you 
must make out your own written lesson-outline. Do 
not write every word that you will speak. It is an 


50 CREATIVE TEACHING 


outline. The lesson is not a lecture, but an event. 
Construct it, therefore. Build it up step by step. 
Create it. Give it the stamp of your own personality. 
Hundreds of Church schools are using the same text- 
book that you are using. We may assume that next 
Sunday a thousand different teachers will teach that 
same “Lesson 12” to a thousand classes. If this be 
the case, these thousand teachers ought literally to 
follow a thousand different lesson-outlines. Much of 
the material will be identical, but the lessons will still 
be different, for each will have its own creator in the 
person of a certain man or woman who is the teacher. 
What you “teach from” will therefore be your out- 
line in your notebook. It will not matter very much 
if you leave your textbook at home. What you must 
take is your notebook containing your original outline. 
This you will have open before you on the table, and 
from it you will conduct the meeting of your class. 


21 
WHAT AN OUTLINE Is 


You have asked me to tell you “concretely” what a 
lesson-plan or teaching outline ought to contain. nee 
me name some of the usual items. 

In the first place there is the important matter of 
the opening prayer for the meeting of the class. After 
the statement of your aim this should usually be the 
next thing which appears on the page of your note- 
book. Every class session should open with a short 
prayer. This takes about thirty seconds or perhaps 
a minute. It corresponds in a way to grace before 
meals. The object of it is to ask God’s blessing on the 
work in hand. In this act you and your pupils conse- 


YOUR PREPARATION 51 


crate yourselves for the forty-minute period which is 
just beginning. It is a dedication of yourself to the 
undertaking in which you are jointly to engage. Even 
if the entire school has just come from a service of 
public worship in the church, the opening prayer for 
the individual class is necessary. The Sunday morn- 
ing Church-school service is a large public affair, com- 
paratively general in its nature. The opening prayer 
of your class is a small, comparatively private affair, 
specific in its nature. 

We are still imagining that this is, say, a Tuesday 
evening, and that you are preparing your next lesson. 
This is the time when you must decide upon the open- 
ing prayer for the class next Sunday. Who is going 
to say the prayer? There are several possibilities. 
Perhaps you will say it alone; perhaps the pupils and 
you will say it together in unison; perhaps one of the 
pupils-will say it alone. These are all good ways. The 
point is that you must choose now the method for 
next Sunday. If you are going to say it alone, now is 
the time to select it. If it is to be said in unison, it 
must either be a prayer which the class knows by 
heart (possibly a class prayer), or one which they can 
read. Perhaps you will have to write or typewrite 
copies. If so, this is the time to do it. If a pupil is 
going to say it alone, that constitutes an individual 
assignment of work of which he must be informed in 
advance. The opening prayer may be taken from a 
prayer book, or it may be an original prayer. There 
are many possibilities. The whole field is open to 
you. Whatever you decide to do, write your decision 
in your notebook. This will be the first main heading 
in your outline, the first step in your program. A 


52 CREATIVE TEACHING 


typical example of an actual entry in a teacher’s note- 
book would be: 


I. PRAYER 


Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the 
spirit to think and do always such things as 
are right; that we, who cannot do anything 
that is good without thee, may by thee be 
enabled to live according to thy will; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 


Said by heart, by Henry Jackson. 


As you see, while the preparation of your first step 
has taken a good deal of thought on your part, it has 
resulted in a brief entry of only a few lines in your 
notebook. : 

The second heading in your outline will perhaps be, 
“Review Last Week’s Work.” On the other hand it 
might be assigning the work for the week to come, or — 
an oral recitation of memory-work. There must be 
no set formula for the sequence of steps in a lesson 
period. A lesson-outline contains many items. Review, 
Recitation, New Assignment, Class Business (attend- 
ance, etc.), Writing, Story-Telling, Map Work, Distri- 
bution of Pictures, Discussion of Plans for the Coming 
Week, The Asking of Prepared Questions, Voting on 
some Definite Plan. Others occur from time to time. 

You must see that these items do not come in the 
same order every week. There should be variety from 
Sunday to Sunday. This is where your ingenuity 
and creative power come into play. ¥Teaching is an 
art, and every teacher an artist. You must mould and 
shape and color your work in such a way as to make 
it most appealing and effective. The people and cir- 


YOUR PREPARATION 53 


cumstances which surround you in your classroom, 
and the literary and other materials at your disposal, 
constitute the medium through which you exercise 
your creative talent. You are a spiritual and religious 
artist, and with God’s help you are creating character. 
There is a hint for you in the fact that the word “poet” 
comes from a Greek root which means “to create.” 
The fact that there is some poetry in your nature is one 
of the signs that your minister did not make a mistake 
when he appointed you for the work of teaching. 


22 
How Ovutiines VARY 


As I was saying, your outlines week after week 
should not follow the same sequence. If they did your 
teaching would be monotonous. It would be a great 
mistake to have a mould into which to pour the differ- 
ent lessons. Unfortunately, some teachers do this. 
They always begin with the review, then give the as- 
signment for next week’s work, then tell the story, 
then mark the attendance, etc. The pupils become so 
used to this order that the classroom period soon grows 
dull and lacks life. You must vary your sequence. 
Remember that an element of surprise helps to arouse 
fresh interest and hold attention. 

You must also study the question of variety within 
a given outline. I mean variety of occupation on the 
part of the pupils. When you prepare your teaching- 
plan always do so from the point of view of the chil- 
dren in your class. Keep asking yourself how it is 
going to feel to them to go through the experiences 
that you plan to have them go through. Then you 
will see that variety is very important. For instance, 


54 CREATIVE TEACHING 


part of their time will be spent sitting and listening; 
part will be spent standing and reciting; part in writ- 
ing; part in discussing; in performing class business 
and errands; in answering questions; in writing on the 
blackboard. You will notice that some of these expe- 
riences are comparatively active and others compara- 
tively passive, from the pupil’s point of view. It is a 
great mistake to lump all the active elements together, 
placing them next to each other in sequence, and then 
follow them with all the passive elements. This is an 
extraordinarily common error. It results in fatigue. 
Be sure, therefore, when you make out your teaching 
plan, that the pupils are constantly alternating be- 
tween one type of event and another. If they have 
been sitting and listening for some time, get them to 
stand or walk or write or speak for a while before they 
have to sit and listen again. 

Even if you have prepared the best possible lesson- 
outline you may still encounter a situation in the ~ 
classroom which will throw you off the track. This is 
sure to happen sometimes. Don’t let it discourage 
you. There is such a thing as a legitimate reason for 
being thrown off the track.’ Perhaps a pupil will bring 
up some genuinely important question which presses 
for an answer at the moment. It may be your golden 
opportunity. Remember that the ultimate purpose of 
teaching religion is to influence lives. The “aim” of 
your lesson may be furthered by this digression from 
your formal teaching plan. You must be the judge of 
this. There are three points to remember in this 
connection: 

First, you must be the master of the situation. If 
you decide to lead your class down a by-path, well and 
good, but you must keep the lead and it must be you 


YOUR PREPARATION 55 


who decides when you have gone far enough and it is 
time to turn back. 

Secondly, be sure that before the lesson-period is 
over you take the class back to the main trend of the 
day’s work, gathering up the side issues into the chief 
topic, so that the work may be unified. 

Thirdly, remember that it is very important to have 
a track from which to be thrown off! There is all 
the difference in the world between this condition of 
affairs and aimless wandering in a trackless waste. 


Deepen and quicken in us, O God, the sense 
of thy presence. Make us to know and feel 
that thou art more ready to teach than we to 
learn. Grant us dignity in our own eyes by 
taking us into thy service, and by revealing 
thyself to us as our Counsellor, our Father, 
and our Friend; through Jesus Christ our 
Lerd.* 


1H. 8. Nash. 


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Ral 7 
Wi 


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YOUR LESSONS 


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Pip sit 


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YOUR LESSONS 


23 
WHAT 1s A Lesson? 


After all, what is a lesson? To this question there 
are five possible answers. 

A lesson is a moral. This is the first and least 
adequate answer. We speak of telling a story and 
then adding a moral, or lesson. One often hears a 
teacher say, ““Now children, what lesson do we learn 
from this beautiful story?” It is permissible to use 
the word in this sense, though it is the most restricted 
and least helpful meaning. 

A lesson is a story told for a moral purpose. This 
is the second answer and marks a progress beyond the 
first. “Our lesson today is the story of the Prodigal 
Son.” In this sense the word is used to describe the 
official “Lessons” read in church. We speak of the 
First Lesson and the Second Lesson, meaning the first 
and second reading from Holy Scripture. This defini- 
tion, however, is also inadequate. 

A lesson is an outline or teaching plan showing 
how a forty-minute classroom period is to be spent. 
This is the third answer. Such an outline will cover 
all the events planned as a program for that one 
meeting of the class, and in it the story has its place 
as one of many items. It is a fairly good definition, 
but not the best. 
<The inadequacy of the third answer will be appar- 

59 


60 CREATIVE TEACHING 


ent to you if you consider for a moment this ques- 
tion: “What is a symphony?” When a symphony is 
about to be played there is on the leader’s desk a 
thick book known as the score. On the pages of this 
book are written the notes to be played by the vari- 
ous musicians in the orchestra. If you took that 
book up, you might point to it and say: “Here is 
the symphony; I hold it in my hand.” But of 
course this would not be true. The book is not the 
symphony. It is a series of musical directions which 
must be strictly obeyed by the different players of 
an orchestra if a symphony is to be the outcome. 
The symphony itself is a complex series of sounds issu- 
ing from perhaps a hundred instruments. These sounds 
roll forth both simultaneously and in sequence. It 
may take twenty minutes for the symphony to be 
produced. A symphony is the edifice, the notes are 
the plans. te 

Your teaching plan or outline bears very much the | 
same relation to the lesson itself that the printed 
score bears to the symphony. If your teaching plan 
(which is a set of directions) is resourcefully followed, 
the lesson will come to life. A lesson happens. It 
is not something on paper. It is a bit of group life 
which lasts forty minutes and takes place in a class- 
room. It is made up of conversation, and monologue, 
and chorus recitation, and praying, and silent thought, 
and writing, and reading, and sometimes singing, draw- 
ing, clay-modelling, and other activities. The dis- 
tinguishing feature of this series of happenings which 
makes it a lesson is its purpose; the fact that you 
have planned it and will direct it, and that a cen- 
tral theme or topic gives it a beginning, middle, and 
end, making it a unit. 


YOUR LESSONS 61 


These considerations lead naturally to the fourth 

answer to our original question, which is, A lesson 
consists of the classroom experiences of the group in 
going through the program which you have planned 
for them. This is the best answer so far, and is 
almost adequate. It has at least the great advan- 
tage of making clear that a true lesson is not some- 
thing that can be bought over a counter in a 
bookstore. It is a living something into which 
living people put a bit of their own lives. You do 
not hand over a lesson; you conduct it. 
The fifth and final answer, which is the really ade- 
quate one, will contribute two new ideas. It recog- 
nizes (1) the fact that a lesson really begins in the 
several homes of the pupils and teacher. (The very 
youngest children, of course, have no home work; but 
aside from them it is true that each lesson begins at 
home when the pupils and teacher sit down to make 
their preparation for the coming meeting of the class.) 
It also récognizes (2) that the lesson culminates some- 
where outside the classroom, in some course of action 
wherein the pupils, by special arrangement with the 
teacher, put the lesson into practice. 

Suppose that you engage a woman to teach your 
daughter to play the piano. When the child goes to 
the studio for her first lesson the teacher gives her a 
book and says, “Here is a textbook that tells how 
to play the piano. It was written by the greatest 
player of the piano who ever lived. It is divided 
into chapters, and each chapter explains the prin- 
ciples of how to play a certain piece. Now open 
the book at the beginning of the first chapter. This 
lesson explains how to play a simple little thing by 
Mozart. You will notice that it is divided into para- 


62 CREATIVE TEACHING 


graphs. Each paragraph shows how a certain num- 
ber of bars are to be played. Now read the first 
paragraph to me aloud. Now close the book and 
tell me in your own words what it says. Notice that 
it explains how you are to use each hand, and how 
to use the pedals. It also tells you what expression 
to put into each phrase.” 

Suppose this teacher goes through the entire book 
in this fashion, fixing in your daughter’s mind ali the 
rules and regulations and ideals in regard to playing 
each piece. Let us say that there are twenty chap- 
ters in the book, and that the methods of playing 
twenty musical compositions are explained. After 
twenty weeks the teacher presents you a bill for hav- 
ing taught your child to play the piano. But be- 
fore paying the bill you remark, “I think I would 
like to hear my daughter play something, to see how 
she has progressed.” “Oh,” says the teacher, “I 
haven’t had her touch the piano, I have only taught. 
her how it ought to be played. She knows perfectly 
how to play twenty beautiful compositions. Just ask 
her and she will tell you.” That is all very well, 
-but you would scarcely be satisfied with it. You ex- 
pected your child to become able to play the piano, 
not merely to recite how it is done. ‘There is a dif- 
ference between learning how to play and learning | 
to play. 

In our Church schools we have been behaving very 
much like the imaginary piano-teacher. --We have 
opened the door and have said to the world, “Send 
your children here and we will teach them to live the 
Christian life.’ Many children have come in. But 
what have we done for them? We have given them 
a book divided into chapters and paragraphs, writ- — 


YOUR LESSONS 63 


ten, as it were, by the greatest Exponent of the 
Christian life. This book we have had them learn 
page by page and verse by verse, but for the most 
part we have never let them “put their fingers on 
the piano.” 

The psychologists tell us that the only way to learn 
to do a thing is to practise doing that thing. They 
do not say that this is the best way, but that it is the 
only way. The only way to learn to play the piano 
is to practise playing the piano. The only way to 
learn to skate is to put skates on your shoes and get 
out on the ice. The memorization of a book on skat- 
ing would not enable you to perform like an expert 
skater. This psychological principle applies to all 
human activities without exception. We can there- 
fore safely say that the only way to learn to live the 
Christian life is to practise living the Christian life. 

We must examine the implications of this word 
“practise”. closely as applied to our present problem— 
religious education. The business of a Church-school 
teacher is to get his pupils to practise the typical 
acts which constitute Christian living. He must get 
them to put themselves though its paces; to drill 
themselves. 

If you are to teach your pupils to be kind to those 
in trouble you must not only explain to them what 
this means, and exhort them, but also (and especially) 
they must consent to definite exercise or practice in 
being kind to somebody now. For instance, take them 
with you some afternoon to a hospital, or to a boy 
or girl who has met with an accident, or to some 
other child in need. Let them take a book or a 
game, or perhaps flowers, which they have paid for 
out of their class treasury, representing their own 


64 CREATIVE TEACHING 


savings and earnings. Let the class vote on all these 
matters: What day they will go; where they will 
meet; whom they will visit; what gift they will take; 
how much money they will spend. When finally they 
go on this errand (and perhaps you go along with 
them), then, and not before, that particular lesson 
reaches its culmination. 

Perhaps you are now ready for the fifth and final 
answer to our question, “What is a lesson?” Here it 
is. KA lesson is a planned group- experience, engaged 
in by pupils and teacher, beginning in their several 
homes, receiving direction and inspiration in the 
eGR and culminating in some special act of 
worship or service in the home or in the community. 

To sum up this matter, the five possible answers 
to our question, “What is a lesson?” are as follows: 

1. A lesson is a moral. ; | 

2. A lesson is a story told for a moral purpose. 

3. A lesson is an outline or teaching plan showing» 
how a classroom period is to be spent. 

4. A lesson is a planned group-experience taking 
place in a classroom. 

5. A lesson is a planned group- experience, engaged 
in by pupils and teacher, beginning in their several 
homes, receiving direction and inspiration in the 
classroom, and culminating in some special act of — 
worship or service in the home or in the community. 

As a matter of fact, an epitome of the history of 
religious education in this country during the past 
fifty years is briefly sketched in these five definitions, 
for religious educational practice has advanced step 
by step along the lines which these definitions in- 
dicate. You can probably recall the Sunday school — 


YOUR LESSONS 65 


that you attended as a child and assign its place in 
this list. 


O Blessed Jesus, who didst bid all those who 
carry heavy burdens to come unto thee; Re- 
fresh us with thy presence and thy power. 
Quiet our understandings and give ease to our 
hearts by bringing us close to things infinite 
and eternal. Open to us the mind of God, that 
in his light we may see light. And crown 
thy choice of us to be thy teachers by making 
us springs of strength and joy for those whom 
thou hast sent us to serve.! 


24. 
Hasit 


People have been called “bundles of habit.” We are 
imitators of our past selves. Your business as a 
teacher is to start or confirm in your pupils the as- 
sortment of habits that will be most useful to them 
throughout their lives. Education is for behavior, 
and behavior consists largely of habits. The psychol- 
ogists tell us that as early as possible we ought to 
make automatic and habitual as many useful ac- 
tions aS we can. 

A good resolve gives a new “set’’ to the brain at 
the moment when it produces the appropriate action 
in the person that makes the resolve. Consequently 
as a teacher of behavior or life your role must be not 
to preach, or to abound in abstract talk (however 
good), but rather to lie in wait for practical oppor- 
tunities to induce your pupils to make “strokes of 
behavior” that will strengthen their character. 

“To teach a lesson well is to use or change the 

1H. S. Nash. 


66 CREATIVE TEACHING 


pupils’ present ideas in such a way as to promote a 
particular change in their attitude or conduct.” 


20 


THOUGHTS AND DEEDS 


It is perfectly true that religion consists of a great 
deal besides acts. I am not forgetting the other ele- 
ments. But in an exposition one can emphasize only 
one thing at a time, and in the past few pages I 
have been deliberately emphasizing guided living as 

a chief part of religious education. 

Our Lord said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind.” The heart is important, and later I 
shall speak of your leadership in the devotional life. 
The mind is also important, and we shall see what 
this involves in the way of memorization, the use 
of the judgment, and other intellectual activities. The 
main emphases, however, in the two Great Com- . 
mandments are the worship of God and the service of 
fellowmen. Both of these are activities. It is true 
that they spring from certain attitudes of mind and 
from a certain fervor of heart, and that it is there- 
fore necessary to cultivate those attitudes and that 
fervor. But these by themselves are not sufficient. 
There must also be, as I have said, the practice of - 
the two activities—towards God (worship) and 
towards man (service). 


26 


Story-TELLING 


You will do well to read one or more books on the 
art of story-telling. These will give you certain well- 


YOUR LESSONS 67 


known rules and principles and other hints. There 
are one or two points to which you must give par- 
ticular attention. 

You must realize the great importance of the story 
as a means of teaching. Keep an eye on yourself 
and see that you do not fall into the bad habit of 
neglecting the story. Do not let a meeting of your 
class go by without using at least one. 

The best kind of story to use is the kind that con- 
tains its own moral, that is to say, one in which the 
spiritual teaching is evident enough so that you will 
not feel the need of labelling it and adding it as a tag. 
The best possible sermon is a good story. As you 
grow in teaching-ability you should use stories more 
and more. 

Practise telling stories to your friends and to the 
members of your family. Remember that the only 
way to learn to do a thing is to practise doing that 
thing, This applies to story-telling as truly as to 
everything else. 

Be sure to use only the best stories. The litera- 
ture available is very rich in these. Do not pass them 
over and content yourself with unworthy material. 
Some of the greatest, most colorful, and most thrilling 
stories are found in the Bible, and some in other books. 

Remember to use direct discourse in telling a story. 
Give the exact words actually spoken by the different 
characters in their conversation. If you fall into the 
habit of substituting indirect for direct discourse you 
will rob the narrative of much of its vividness. If 
you do not believe this, open your Bible at Genesis 
37:29-33. First read this passage as it is written, and 
then read it as I give it here, in indirect discourse, and 
see how flat it has become. 


68 . CREATIVE TEACHING 


And Reuben returned unto the pit; and 
the child Joseph was not in the pit; and 
he rent his clothes. And he returned unto ~ 
his brethren and said that the child was 
not; and that as for him, whither should 
he go? And they took Joseph’s coat and © 
killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the 
coat in the blood; and they sent the coat 
of many colors, and they brought it to 
their father; and said that they had found 
it, and that he could tell whether it was 
his son’s coat or no. And he knew it, 
and said that it was his son’s coat; and 
that an evil beast had devoured him; and 

' that Joseph was without doubt rent in 
pieces. 


CT 
MENTAL IMAGES 


If you close your eyes you can see in your imagina- 
tion the front door of your house, or the streets of a 
distant city, or the face of some absent friend. By 
an effort of the imagination you can also “hear” the 
sound of sleigh bells, or of a brass band playing ‘“On- 
ward, Christian Soldiers.’ Probably you can also 
“smell” the fragrance of violets, or the peculiar damp — 
odor of a steaming plum-pudding. You can also 
“taste” orange juice, and “feel” the touch of running 
water on your hand. Besides the images connected 
with the five senses, you can also feel familiar mo- 
tions, such as running or swimming or throwing a 
ball. All such imaginary or mental experiences are 
called mental images. 

In telling stories to children, and also in describing 


YOUR LESSONS 69 


things to them, use as many types of mental image 
as you can. Do not always tell how things look, but 
take care also to put in the sounds. Some of the 
most dramatic and vivid passages in stories are due 
to the recalling of sounds. Remind them how cer- 
tain things feel, and have them pause for a moment 
to remember. For instance, if the scene you ‘are de- 
scribing is laid in Alaska, make your talk vivid by 
having the pupils recall how their hands felt in 
winter when they were numb with cold. The same 
device can be used with all the senses. A mistake 
made by many teachers is to use mental images in 
connection with only one sense, selecting, of course, 
the one in which the teacher herself happens 
to experience the most vivid mental images. Remem- 
ber that among your pupils there may be several 
whose mental images are most vivid where yours are | 
weakest. In fairness to these pupils you must guard 
against specializing on a certain sense just because 
it 1s easiest for you. 
28 


Memory Work 


“Memory Work” means the memorization of cer- 
tain portions of religious literature calculated to en- 
rich one’s spiritual life. Especially in the Bible, 
Prayer Book, and Church Hymnal, but in other reli- 
gious writings as well, there are many passages of 
beauty and power with which a pupil can store his 
mind. In doing so your object is not only to give him 
culture, acquainting him with great literature, though 
this is a worthy aim, but also to strengthen his moral 
and religious life by arming him with weapons as a 
defense against spiritual enemies. 


70 CREATIVE TEACHING 


There are times when a memorized precept or rule 
of life may leap to the front as a ready guide for 
immediate action. Our moral life consists very 
largely in making decisions. We are often helped 
to make the right one by the almost automatic recall 
of some long-memorized rule of life, some guide to 
action, or concise expression of an ideal. The Golden 
Rule is an example. It has often been pointed out 
that the Bible record of our Lord’s spiritual battle in 
the wilderness shows that as each separate temptation 
came to Him there flashed into His mind a passage 
from Scripture indicating how it should be met. 

The theory of education in religion has been under- 
going the same general change as the theory of edu- 
cation in other fields. That is to say, we are learn- 
ing to look upon religious education as a training of 
definite religious abilities. We have begun to expect 
tangible results; we are saying that a real religious 
education is one that actually makes a boy or girl 
live a definite life of worship and service. In other 
words, we want modern religious education to be 
practical rather than merely verbal; it should be an 
aid to and bear fruit in acts rather than words. 

This modern tendency to emphasize practice over 
mere knowledge is necessary and valuable. The 
practical side of education was indeed woefully 
neglected until recently, and we do well to give it 
new emphasis. But our emphasis upon it must not 
lead us to fall into the opposite error of regarding 
practice as the whole of education. ‘Mere knowl- 
edge,” as it 1s sometimes derisively called, is still of 
immense value. Our children must be as thoroughly 
informed today as ever. Truth must be diligently 
sought and revered. 


YOUR LESSONS 71 


To learn by heart means to learn letter-perfect. It 
is only a little more difficult to learn a passage letter- 
perfect than to learn it approximately. The differ- 
ence between these two performances is very slight 
from the point of view of a pupil’s effort. Never- 
theless, it is very great from the point of view of 
his moral and spiritual growth. To allow approxi- 
mation in place of perfection is to encourage just that 
intellectual laziness and carelessness of detail which, 
starting in lesser things, easily leads to lack of integ- 
rity all along the line, culminating perhaps in some 
serious form of dishonesty or in general untruthful- 
ness. It also encourages lack of thoroughness in ob- 
servation, and may lead to other slovenly and debili- 
tating mental habits. 

Teach your pupils the meaning of a passage before 
you ask them to memorize it. It is a waste of effort 
to memorize the mere verbal sound of a passage with- 
out knowing what it means. Incidentally, it takes 
longer. If you have ever attempted to memorize a 
paragraph of nonsense you will recall how much more 
difficult it was than memorizing an intelligible para- 
graph of equal length. If a child undertakes to learn 
by heart a paragraph of which he does not understand 
the meaning, he is forcing himself to labor under this 
very difficulty. 

Suppose it is the Twenty-third Psalm. Go over 
it with the pupil and give him its general atmosphere 
and point, perhaps showing him pictures or models 
and giving him an understanding of the figures which 
appear in the Psalm. Study the more difficult words 
with him, making sure that he has a definite and 
true conception of their meaning. Talk with him 
about the Psalm as a whole, drawing comparisons with 


72 CREATIVE TEACHING 


things which he already knows in his daily life. When 
finally the meaning of the Psalm is familiar and 
vivid to him, and he feels at home in its atmosphere, 
then, and only then, set him the task of learning it by 
heart. Now the child in going over the Psalm word by 
word and phrase by phrase, in the act of committing it 
to memory, will be calling to his mind the ideas which 
the Psalm conveys. In this way he will get much 
more out of his drill than if he were merely learning, 
parrot-like, the sound of words. 


29 
ENCOURAGEMENT 


Do not get discouraged. I know just how it is, for 
I have taught Sunday-school classes myself. I know 
what it is to go home Sunday noon with the feeling 
that nothing has taken place as expected, and that 
all your plans have gone awry. Nevertheless, in im- 
parting religion, success and failure are not easily | 
measured. You really never know when you do your 
best work. You may influence the lives of your pu- 
pils for good even when you think you have failed. 

When that unlooked-for interruption caused by the 
illness of the organist occurred, followed by the further 
disturbance of the arrival of the new pupil, and this 
in turn gave place to the disappointment of Harry’s 
forgetting his notebook, and when on top of all this 
you had to move your class to a new place because 
of the broken window-pane, you surely found your- 
self amid unusual difficulties. Then, you remember, 
the recitation not only went badly, but the story was 
practically spoiled by that irritating secretary who 
stumbled in upon you while the story was in full 


YOUR LESSONS 73 


flight and asked for the facts about the new pupil. 
All these things upset you and snapped the thread of 
your class’s attention and interest. ‘These events you 
are perfectly aware of without my telling you. But 
what you do not know is the rest of the story. Let 
me tell you what really happened. Your pupils, see- 
ing your plight, instinctively watched your behavior. 
An unexpected little drama was going on before their 
eyes. Here stood a grown-up Christian on trial! They 
were very alert to see how she would take it; whether 
she would be a good sport; in what spirit she would 
weather the storm. Somehow you kept your poise 
and your optimism and managed to master, if not the 
prepared lesson, at least yourself and the situation. 
The net result was that the boys went home at the 
end of the hour with their respect for you intact, 
and, what is far more important, a higher regard for 
Christ’s religion. They have not talked about it, 
but in the mind of each there runs a thought some- 
thing like this: “That is the way a Christian grown-up 
behaves under stress.” 

In a very real sense you probably taught a good 
lesson that day. Remember that when these boys 
are middle-aged men and have forgotten most of the 
stories you have told them, the one thing that they - 
will remember, if they remember anything, is you. 


Put far off from us, O God, all worry and 
misgiving; that having done our best while it 
was day, we may when the night cometh com- 
mit ourselves, our tasks, and those we love, 
into thy keeping, and accept from thee the 
gift of sleep; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 





YOUR PUPILS 





YOUR PUPILS 
30 


How A LEARNER LEARNS 


You are not likely to succeed as a teacher unless 
you know something about the process of learning 
as it actually takes place in the mind of a pupil. A 
law of nature, you know, is not a commandment to 
be obeyed or disobeyed, but simply a description of 
the way a force works and the unfailing way it is 
followed by the same effect. The law of gravity is 
an example. Similarly, the laws of psychology are 
descriptions of the same ways over and over again in 
which our minds and souls work under given con- 
ditions. Among the many laws of psychology there 
are two that apply to the process of learning facts or 
ideas. They answer the question, What does a human 
mind do when it learns a new fact? 

The first of these tells us that the mind of the 
learner advances through the known to the unknown. 
It must start with an old fact in order to understand 
a new one. It goes from the familiar to the unfa- 
miliar. What it knows today is the key with which 
it unlocks the door upon the hitherto unknown ideas 
of tomorrow. 

Here, for instance, is a child of five who has not the 
faintest conception of the shape of the earth. The 

77 


78 CREATIVE TEACHING 


earth’s shape is a notion that his mind has not come 
to yet. He has not even stopped to wonder what 
shape the earth 1s, 

Let us pretend that it is your duty to seat 
him with the fact that the earth is round. How 
will you go about it? You might catch his eye and 
say, ‘Look here, Tommy, the earth is somewhat spher- 
ical in shape.” He would hear your words and pos- 
sibly notice them enough to smile or even laugh; but 
the idea of the shape of the earth would remain quite 
as truly outside his mind as before. 

What you would naturally do, even without know- 
ing any psychology, would be to place in his hand an 
orange. He would look at it and turn it over and over, 
feeling its roundness and sensing its thickness and 
solidity. You would then say: “This earth that we 
are walking on is really a great big round hae like | 
that orange.” 

I do not say that this experience would give the 
child an adequate notion of the earth’s shape. He 
would need to have this first impression modified 
and enriched from year to year. But I do say that 
any idea whatever of the earth’s shape which this 
child could lay hold of, he could get only by some 
such comparison as this. 

Notice what took place. The idea of the shape of © 
the orange was already present in his mind, and from 
this he proceeded to form an idea of the hitherto abso- 
lutely unknown shape of the earth. The psychologists 
do not say that this “proceeding from the known 
to the unknown” jis the best way to learn. They 
have proved that it is the only way. Learning is a 
process of associating. Every new idea that we learn 


YOUR PUPILS 79 


we learn by connecting with some idea already in our 
minds. It is always a case of supplying a connecting 
link. If you could not connect a new fact with some- 
thing already in your mind, that fact would remain 
an unknown hieroglyphic which you could not de- 
cipher. To know a thing thoroughly means that you 
have found ways to connect it securely with many 
other things in your mind. Hammering an idea in 
hard does not cause it to become well learned. Con- 
necting it with many already well-known thoughts is 
what does the trick. 

“Any new piece of knowledge offered to a learner 
must be met by old ideas closely related to it if it is to 
be understood and appreciated by the learner. The 
close connection between the old piece of knowledge 
and the new must be a connection which the learner 
feels. Some notion already within the learner’s mind 
must grow so as to include the new idea. A learner’s 
present stock of ideas is his only key to the meaning 
of new experiences.” 

This first simple law of learning has its roots very 
deep in human experience. There are almost count- 
less applications in our daily life. I have not time 
to tell you all the ways in which this law operates. 
You will read about them when you study psychology. 
But let me give you just a few hints that bear par- 
ticularly upon your work as a teacher. 


Much of the secret of success in teaching lies in ~ 


your ability to tell your pupils what this and that 
thing are like. Every good teacher is constantly 
saying that such and such a thing is like this and 
like that. As you see, the phrase “is like” stands 
between two terms; the term that comes before that 


80 CREATIVE TEACHING 


phrase is the new idea or fact which you are trying 
to teach and explain, and the term that comes after 
it is some already well-known idea. (“The earth—is 
like—an orange.) Skill in teaching consists in select- 
ing the right thing for the second term. In teaching 
about the earth, an orange is a good second term 
to use provided that the child to whom you are speak- 
ing has seen and handled an orange. But a very 
common mistake in teaching is to select for the second 
term of the “equation” some object or idea which is 
as far removed from the learner’s experience as the 
first term. (The classic example is the minister * who 
tells the children that Epiphany means manifesta- 
tion.) It is surprising how often teachers do this. 
For instance, a child asks, “What is a parable?” and 
the teacher replies: “A parable is like an allegory; it 
is a kind of simile in the form of a narrative.” This is 
all very true, but allegory and swmile and narrative 
are no more part of the child’s stock of knowledge — 
than parable. The teacher has given an equivalent 
without doing any teaching. | 

This error is what I call the “Swamp Cogan habit.” 
Guides in the woods of Maine love to talk about a 
legendary animal called the Swamp Cogan. When 
the tenderfoot innocently asks what a Swamp Cogan 
is, the guide replies in a matter-of-fact voice that it is 
the animal that lives on bog oranges. The next ques- — 
tion, of course, is, “What is a bog orange?” To which 
the invariable answer comes, “It is what the Swamp 
Cogan lives on.” 

Most of the ideas with which we deal in Church- 
school work are spiritual and moral. This makes 
your work all the more interesting when you find it 


1 His name is legion. 


YOUR PUPILS 81 


necessary to explain some new thought, as the gap 
to be bridged between the known and the unknown 
is so wide. For instance, what will you use as the 
link of connection to explain God, the Holy Spirit, 
loyalty, worship, the Church, Baptism? In each case 
you must say to yourself: What idea is there already 
in the mind of this child which will make it possible 
for him to grasp the meaning of the idea that I want 
to explain to him today? 


31 


LEARNING VERSUS ECHOING 


The province of this first law of learning is the 
learning of the meaning of a thing. Without pro- 
ceeding from the known to the unknown it is quite 
possible for the learner’s mind to memorize words and 
thus secure an appearance of learning. But this is 
not learning at all. Much so-called teaching has made 
the mistake of contenting itself with correct answers. 
But a child may give the right answer without learn- 
ing. It is necessary for the learner’s mind to advance 
from an old idea to a new idea if the new idea is to 
be understood and not merely echoed. Really to 
learn a thing is to see its point, to grasp its meaning. 


Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who 
hast committed to thy holy Church the care 
and nurture of thy children; Enlighten with 
thy wisdom those who teach and those who 
learn, that rejoicing in the knowledge of thy 
truth, they may worship thee and serve thee 
from generation to generation; through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 


82 CREATIVE TEACHING 


32 
How A LEARNER FINISHES THE LEARNING PROCESS 


A second law of learning declares that the. learner 
must go on immediately to express the new fact or 
idea, once he has gotten a good grip on it by connecting 
it with some old idea. You would naturally think 
that a person finished learning something first and 
then expressed it or not, as he saw fit. As a matter 
of fact, however, the expression of it (for the first two 
or three times) is part of the process of learning it. 
You have not finished learning a thing until you 
have given expression to it. The expression may be 
oral, or dramatic, or by writing, or modelling, or draw- 
ing, or in any one of a number of ways. 

The primary reason for asking a pupil to recite is 
not in order that you may discover whether he has 
learned what you are trying to teach him, but in order 
that he may complete the process of learning it. (This. 
law is recognized in the familiar statement that you 
never really know a subject until you teach it.) Having 
gotten the child to grasp the idea that the earth is 
shaped something like an orange, you must then give 
him an opportunity to tell someone about it. Other- 
wise the idea may fade and then disappear from his 
mind altogether. His expression of the idea com- 
pletes his learning of it. 

Another way of putting it is to say that you a 
not possess anything until you create it. What you 
give out, or express, or give birth to, is really your 
own. It becomes a part of you the instant you ex- 
press it, but not before. 

This Recond law of learning has reference to the 


YOUR PUPILS 83 


need of expressing the meaning of the newly acquired 
fact, and does not refer to the mere echoing of the 
formula which clothes the fact. You might say, “The 
earth is spherical.” If the child echoing your words 
responds, “The earth is spherical,’ this is not an 
example of the second law of learning, because he has 
no meaning to express, “spherical” being an idea that 
has made no place for itself in his mind. One of 
the commonest mistakes in teaching is to be satisfied 
with such echo-answers. You avoid this mistake when 
you get the pupil to express the new fact in his own 
words. Persuade a pupil whenever he recites to pre- 
tend that he is teaching some other child, or explaining 
to his mother and father, what he has learned in 
school.. This puts him in the right attitude to finish 
that particular piece of learning, and saves him from 
the wasteful juggle of merely trying to give his teacher 
the right answer. 

Sand-tables are not used in geography or topography 
in order to provide the children with diversion or 
amusement, but to give them an outlet for the facts 
in topography or geography which you want them 
to finish learning. When they heap up the mountain 
ranges, scoop out the lakes, and draw the rivers with 
their fingers, they are in a sense actually making the 
facts which you want them to know. A child seldom 
forgets facts which he has expressed in this way. 
Psychologically, the reason that God knows the uni- 
verse better than anyone else is because He made it. 
This is also the reason why He knows you and me 
better than anyone else does. Nobody can know a 
thing quite as well as the person who made it. Think 
for a moment of the objects which you have made: 
a dress, or a hat, a wooden box, or a toy ship, a scrap- 


84 CREATIVE TEACHING 


book, a garden. Does anybody else know these ob- 
jects quite as intimately or quite as thoroughly as 
you do? 

33 


EXPRESSIONAL ACTIVITY 


The phrase ‘“expressional activity” is somewhat 
loosely used to describe two distinct phases of the 
educational process. | 

The first use, which is the more proper of the two, 
is to describe some action which the pupil engages 
in for the sake of fixing an idea in his mind. For 
instance, writing a composition; making an oral reci- 
tation; drawing a map; building the topography of 
a country in sand. In these cases the pupil does the 
outward act in order to clinch his hold of the inward 
idea. He does not write the composition as an exer- 
cise In writing, but in order to finish learning, for in-. 
stance, the sequence of events in the Civil War. He 
does not make an oral recitation as an exercise in 
public speaking, but in order to strengthen his mind’s 
grip upon the substance of what he recites. He does 
not draw maps in order to become an expert cartog- 
rapher, nor does he work in sand in order to become 
an expert sand-table artist. The expressional work 
or outward act is only a means (usually physical) to 
an intellectual end. | 

The other use of the phrase “expressional activity,” » 
which is less correct, but which you will find in some 
books, is to describe what I have called “guided liv- 
ing.” Just as a boy must go skating in order to learn 
to skate, so he must, for example, perform generous 
acts if he is going te learn to be generous. I have 
already mentioned instances where a class performs 


s We 


YOUR PUPILS 85 


in company certain acts of kindness in order to acquire 
the Christian habit and virtue of kindness. You learn 
to be generous by being generous. That which comes 
to birth within as an impulse—to mercy, fair play, or 
self-denial, for instance—must come out and find ex- 
pression in a corresponding act of mercy or fair play 
or self-denial as the case may be. Otherwise the 
character-forming possibilities perish unrealized. 

In the one case the end is the capturing of an idea 
that will help to build a strong mind, and in the 
other of a trait of character that will help to build a 
strong man. The two kinds of expressional activity 
have much in common. They both justify their 
demands for opportunities for self-expression. They 
are both, also, active. Nevertheless they are two 
distinct things, and if you are a careful student you 
will distinguish between them in order that you may 
induce your pupils to give them both wide scope 
throughout their mind- and character-forming years. 


. Grant unto me, Almighty God, that justice 
which builds on thee, the faith which works 
with thee, and the patience which abides thy 
long delays; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


34 


MovEMENT 


Variety and movement are essential—except to un- 
consciousness. Have you ever tried to concentrate 
your whole mind on a black dot on a white sheet of 
paper? It can be done only for a few seconds. After 
a short interval you must either look away or else you 
will fall into a kind of trance. You can look at a 
picture a good deal longer because it has various parts, 

1H. §S. Nash. 


86 CREATIVE TEACHING 


and represents ideas which you can think about. Even 
to a great picture, however, you can pay uninterrupted 
attention for only a comparatively few minutes. Five 
minutes’ unbroken contemplation of a masterpiece 
you would probably find very long and tiring, though 
people who are experienced in the technique of line 
and color can sometimes keep it up longer. The quick 
fatigue is due to the fact that the black dot and the 
picture are both immobile. Attention demands move- 
ment and progress and development in the thing at- 
tended to. This is why you can give your undivided 
mind for hours to a novel, even a second-rate one, or 
a poor play. 

Does the lesson as you conduct it on a Gnd 
move? Does it progress from point to point? Has 
it variety? Does it develop? Do your pupils and 
you build it up together step by step? Can you (and 
especially they) feel it grow? 

Never forget that tie human mind .itself is in a 
state of constant movement. It is not static. It 
tingles and vibrates. It cannot stand still. It is 
therefore your business to provide a program for 
your pupils that will give their minds something to 
_ move around in and work on. William James sum- 
marized this point in memorable words when he said: 
“Let your pupil’s mind wander from one aspect of the 
subject to another if you do not wish it to wander 
from the subject altogether.” 


35 
OBSTACLES 


There is another very important matter in which 
movement plays a part. The one object amidst mo- 


YOUR PUPILS 87 


tionless objects that moves attracts the observer’s eye 
and mind. Advertising companies make use of this 
principle. Walk down a street among the shops and 
the one store window which has in it some advertise- 
ment that moves, like a swinging pendulum, will claim 
a disproportionate share of your attention. This is 
purely instinctive and practically irresistible. 

If your pupils are so seated in your Sunday-school 
room that they can look up and see other classes, they 
are bound to give their attention to any person who 
may happen to be moving (perhaps someone writ- 
ing on the blackboard), in fact, to any movement 
however quiet or innocent in itself. This is why it 
is important to have curtains between the classes. You 
may not be able to bring about all the necessary im- 
provements in your school’s equipment, but at least 
you can exercise influence enough to have your class 
space screened in and relieve your work of this 
handicap. 

Be careful also not to have the class face a window. 
Staring into a bright light induces sleep. If anyone 
has to face a window let it be yourself. There are 
times when a teacher has to choose between having 
the pupils face a window and letting them face other 
classes. But usually this dilemma can be overcome 
either by the use of screens or by arranging the chairs 
in rows at right angles to both dangers. 


36 
INTERESTS BeGet INTERESTS 


There is no separate principle or rule-of-thumb for 
securing and maintaining attention. Attention is not 


88 CREATIVE TEACHING 


a separate problem. It is the problem of good teach- 
ing. You do not first learn how to teach and then 
learn how to secure attention. It is all the one thing. 
A well-prepared and well-conducted lesson holds the 
attention of the pupils. Inattention is a fruit of bad 
teaching. 

By taking successive advantage again and again at 
short intervals of the operation of the psychological 
law that the learner’s mind advances from the known 
to the unknown, what some people call “points of 
contact” can be maintained throughout the entire 
lesson-period. | 

I have already said that you ought to know prac- 
tically everything about your pupils; but chiefly you 
need to know their interests and their needs. These 
are your starting-point. Your goal is the enlarge- 
ment of their interests in such a way as to meet their 
needs. Take any pupil as you find him and you find 
him full of interests. (It is never necessary to supply 
a child with interests.) The teacher’s work consists in 
developing interests considered vital by the pupil to — 
meet his real spiritual needs. 

The way to hold their attention captive to the 
lesson is to win it. It is literally a case of winning. 
Other objects will compete against you, and the mind 
instinctively gives attention to whatever appeals to 
it as the most engrossing thing in sight or hearing ~ 
at each moment. The lesson for the day, the busi- 
ness in hand, has got to be the most interesting thing 
in sight and hearing during your forty minutes. If 
it is not, the pupils will certainly not give their atten- 
tion to it, except possibly the kind that is called foreed 
or voluntary attention, which is not the real thing. 


YOUR PUPILS 89 


What you want is the involuntary or spontaneous 
kind of attention, which is real. 

As someone has put it, “The way to keep your pupils 
interested and therefore attentive and therefore or- 
derly, is to develop their existing interests so as to 
make these interests include both the lesson-material 
and the conditions of good order.” 

You will find that a pupil will take a permanent 
interest in a lesson which he understands and has had 
a hand in making. 


7) 
DIVERTERS 


You see that the problem of attention, apart from 
its being intrinsically a problem of providing good 
teaching, is often a case of removing obstacles. Some 
teachers unconsciously create obstacles to attention. 
For instance, in the matter of clothing. I have seen 
hats which were so interesting, on which such deli- 
cately balanced ornaments nodded and glittered with 
every movement of the head, that the fascinated chil- 
dren could hardly look at: anything else. An excess 
of bangles or knickknacks produce the same effect, 
and so do overbright colors. The pupils sit in rapt 
attention—to the wrong thing. Do not appear too 
peculiar or too interesting in these respects, especially 
as you meet your pupils only once a week and they 
hardly have time.to get used to little distractions 
which in themselves may be harmless. 


O Lord of life, make our lives clear spaces 
where children may find happiness and law; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 


1H. S. Nash. 


96 CREATIVE TEACHING 
38 
A WARNING | 


Do not resort to commanding attention by clap- 
ping your hands, or ringing a bell, or by any such 
device, if you can possibly help it. The effect is only 
temporary. Moreover, it calls attention to the wrong 
thing: to some penalty, or to the general question of 
attention, or to yourself. What you want them to 
pay attention to is the lesson or the business in hand. 
If by commanding you fasten their attention to your- 
self, you still have the problem of transferring it from 
yourself to the lesson. The point of contact which 
you want to make is contact between their present 
interests and the main problem of the lesson. Scold- 
ing does not accomplish this, nor does bribing or urging 
or entertaining. | 


39 
Hasits 


Another factor that has a big bearing is the forma- 
tion in your pupils of the habit of being attentive to 
the lessons which you conduct. A class forms the 
habit of attention or of inattention to a given teacher 
in a given subject. Like all habits these grow with 
use. A class which during eight or ten weeks has 
formed the habit of paying attention will often give 
the same good attention, by a kind of momentum, 
even when the teacher for some reason or other has 
what might be called an “‘off-day.” On the other hand, 
a class which has formed the habit of inattention will 


YOUR PUPILS 91 


probably not pay good attention on the day that the 
teacher suddenly conducts an exceptionally fine lesson. 
Curiously enough the same group of pupils can form 
the habit of attention with one teacher in one subject, 
and of inattention with another teacher in another sub- 
ject. If you have an inattentive group on Sunday, 
the teacher of geography may find the same group 
very attentive on Monday, or vice versa. In all this 
the psychological laws of association and suggestion 
and habit play a strong part. 


40 
LANGUAGES 


If your pupils are studying French, Latin, Greek, 
Spanish, German, or some other foreign language, give 
them a Bible in this language and let them follow the 
Scripture lessons as they are read in church. This 
will serve the double purpose of helping to keep their 
attention on the service and giving them excellent 
practice in reading the new language. 


41 
Tue Dirricutt ONE 


What are you going to do with your least re- 
sponsive pupil? Perhaps he is shy—or lazy—or in- 
different—or dull. He does not appear to make a 
place for himself within the fellowship of the class. 
You fail really to reach and to enlist him. 

Try to provide this pupil with some definite and 
interesting assignment. For instance, induce him to 
look up during the week some fact concerning which 
the other members of the class will not be informed, 


92 CREATIVE TEACHING 


so that next Sunday he may be the one to supply 
that information and thus come to feel that he has 
helped to construct the lesson. Possibly what that 
pupil needs most is to feel that he is needed. 


O God, the unwearied courage and un- 
conquerable strength of the saints; Glorify in 
us, we beseech thee, thine own power, that 
being conquerors through patience, we may of 
thy gracious gift attain unto holiness of life; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


42 
Tue Joy or DISCOVERY 


One secret of good teaching is the ability to let 
your pupils discover truth for themselves. This ap- 
plies to any subject. A good teacher of elementary 
arithmetic gives a child some counters to play with 
and leaves him to make for himself the discovery that 
two and two make four. At the moment he makes 
the discovery and comes running to the teacher to tell — 
her about it, the child really finishes learning that 
truth. He does more than learn it. It is tinged with 
an emotional and personal excitement which makes it 
part of his own unfolding life. Thus, he learns it 
really and thoroughly. He learns it creatively. It is 
almost as if he had made two and two equal four. 
His discovery is an experience, his very own. He . 
loves that bit of knowledge because he discovered it 
himself, 

Test this by your own experience and you will find 
that you always love what you discover. It is a human 
instinct. If you discover that a novel by an author 
not yet famous is exceptionally good you immediately 


YOUR PUPILS 93 


get your friends to read it. You take pains to see 
that they read it, and wait for their commendation 
with almost as much excitement and expectancy as 
if you had written the book yourself. Because you 
discovered it it is your book. Very much the same 
thing happens in the case of your other convictions. 
If you think something out and arrive at a conclusion 
by yourself, you grow extremely fond of that particu- 
lar opinion. Anything that you feel is especially 
yours, that you have in some sense created, is always 
particularly dear. 

This is one reason why people take so very emphatic 
a stand about a second opinion on a given question. 
When you hear someone say, “I used to think so and 
so, but now I am convinced that the opposite is the 
truth,’ you may be sure that he holds the second 
opinion more strongly than-he did the first. He loves 
it because it is a discovery of his own. That is why 
people who change their allegiance from one denom- 
ination to another usually become more ardent sup- 
porters of the Church of their final choice than people 
who have grown up in that Church. To discover a 
Church is to love it with that peculiar passion which 
is mixed with personal pride in one’s wisdom or acute- 
ness. You will doubtless recall many other illustra- 
tions of this very human trait. 

You must allow this instinct to have free play in 
your pupils. Do not thrust truth at them as if it were 
propaganda, but rather cover it up a little and only 
lead them near enough to it so that they may have 
the pleasure of lifting the veil themselves. Let them 
discover it in their own way. Let them even think 
that they are discovering it in spite of you. This 
will not hurt your feelings, for your business is to make 


94. CREATIVE TEACHING 


them think not how wonderful you are but how won- 
derful truth is. Your most triumphant moment must 
always be the moment when some pupil comes to 
you to tell you about a great discovery that he has 
made, and you realize that it is just the thing that 
you have wanted him to learn. 

If you are wise you will never greet his declaration 
with “That is just what I hoped you would find,” but 
will express your interest and joy in the truth itself, 
seeing it with the pupil’s eyes as if for the first time, 
and sharing in the delight and surprise of his fresh 
discovery. The crowning glory of teaching is the abil- 
ity to make a pupil feel that he is teaching you rather 
than that you are teaching him. When he is older he 
will look back and realize with what gentleness and 
skill you led him to truths which in his innocent and 
impetuous enthusiasm he thought he was discovering 
unaided. He will then, in his maturity, appreciate 
and praise you, at that safe distance whence praise 
will do you no harm. Very likely you yourself can 
recall some teacher of your youth who stood modestly 
by while you rushed headlong into a new mansion of | 
truth through a door which she held silently open 
for you. 


O God, who alone canst uphold the hearts 
of man, set us free from vanity and fear, to 
the end that thine everlasting Gospel may 
through us reach the world without hurt or 
hindrance; through our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ.? 


1H. S. Nash. 


YOUR CLASS 





YOUR CLASS 
43 


SUCCESS 


Do you regard your class as successful? 

To know whether anything is successful or not we > 
must first know its aim. A successful enterprise is 
one which fulfills its aim. Someone has said that the 
aim of a Church-school class is to induce a group of 
pupils progressively to acquire and progressively to 
put into practice definite Christian knowledge and 
ideals. It has also been said that a class should aim 
at the intelligent solution of the present spiritual prob- 
lems of its pupils. Or a Church school may be re- 
garded as an agency which “applies definite ideas to 
the solution of definite problems of particular pupils 
in such a way as to promote their growth into Chris- 
tian maturity.” Again, we may say that your aim 
should be to effect the formation of Christian char- 
acter in your pupils for the sake of extending the 
kingdom of God. These are all very academic and 
precise statements, but if you will think about them 
and will then try to answer fairly the question, “How 
are these boys different because they come to my 
class?” you may be able to get some idea as to how 
successful your teaching is. 

The level of a Church school can never rise above 

97 


~. 98 CREATIVE TEACHING 


the quality of teaching which actually takes place in 
its classrooms week by week. We need to be re- 
minded over and over again that a school’s success is 
not measured by the efficiency of its administration, 
the excellence of its textbooks, the size of its enroll- 
ment, the heartiness of its singing, or any other stand- 
ard of the sort. The real test of a Church school 
at any given moment is the quality of the Leaching 
that goes on in it. 

Do not be discouraged because you cannot put your 
finger on results that can be put down and added up. 
You may be perfectly certain that you can never 
measure accurately the success of your class. Only 
God really knows exactly how much you are doing 
for your pupils. Very likely some of the finest things 
you do for them you will never know. Spiritual growth 
takes place silently. 


Grant, O God, we beseech thee, that in this 
our battle of life we may never faint nor be 
weary, but continuing steadfast in thy service 
may at length obtain the victory which thou 
hast promised to thy faithful servants; through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 


44 
TRAINING TO SERVE 


Every Church-school teacher worthy of the name is | 
training young people to carry gladly their share of 
the load in social service. You are giving your pupils 
ideals which will make them better neighbors in what- 
ever community they happen to live. You must give 
them also practice in living a neighborly life. The 


YOUR CLASS 99 


place to begin is in the life of the class itself. This 
class is a social unit. It is a little group within the 
kingdom of God. You must set the tone of this group 
and see that it conducts itself in a way that could be 
called a model for all other groups, ranging in size 
from a family to a city or nation. In your class you 
will find yourself confronted with such problems as 
courtesy, mutual forbearance, generosity, helpfulness, 
and self-sacrifice. Hach member will have to control 
his own private desires for the good of the whole class. 
The class as a unit will have to put itself out for the 
good of the whole school; the school for the parish; the 
parish for nation and Church and world. 

Great as it may come to be finally, it all has its 
beginnings in this one little group of which you are 
the leader. By the way you conduct the class and 
by the way you teach the class to conduct its own 
affairs, you teach the Christian life in its social aspect. 
The political ideas of these boys, their notions about 
fair play, their public spirit, their sense of civic re- 
sponsibility—these and other ideals will partly depend 
updn how they as a group conduct their group life 
under your guidance. 

In all your work of this kind be sure that your 
teaching makes use of real situations. Do not manu- 
facture situations or talk about imaginary ones. It 
is far better to take what really happens in the nat- 
ural course of events and deal with it and interpret 
it so as to teach Christian social living. 


© Master of men, set our hearts on fire 
with the desire to know thy blessed will, and 
send us forth amongst thy people to teach and 
to save; through Jesus Christ our Lord.* 
1H. S. Nash. 


~~ 


100 CREATIVE TEACHING 


45 
A Society 


You ought to regard your pupils not primarily as 
a class, but really as a club or organization. I.do not 
make this distinction for the sake of the words, but 
because the words signify different things regarding 
the purpose of the group. The purpose of a class 
is usually.considered to be the acquiring of informa- 
tion, whereas the purpose of a club or of an organi- 
zation usually is to carry forward some cause. The lat- 
ter idea ought to control your group of pupils. They 
are a small part of the Christian Church, banded to- 
gether under your leadership for the purpose of pro- 
moting a certain cause and accomplishing certain 
results. | 

When you meet your pupils for the first time in 
the autumn I can imagine you saying to them some- 
thing like this: “You and I are going to form a sort 
of club which will meet here once a week on Sundays 
and occasionally on other days, sometimes at the | 
church and sometimes in other places. We have a 
very special piece of work that the Church has given 
us to do this year. A different task has been given ~ 
to each class in our school. Our work is going to be 
to find out what kind of a life Jesus lived on this 
earth, and then to do practice-work as a group living 
that kind of a life. That is our work for the year, 
and that is the purpose of our existence as a group. 
We shall try to find out what this lot of thirteen-year- 
old boys can do for our parish, and for our town, and 
for the world at large, that will be the kind of thing 
that Jesus would do; and we are not only going to 


YOUR CLASS 101 


find out what it is but we are going to do it. Our 
aim is to make ourselves better servants of Christ.” 


46 
Cuass SPIRIT 


I have heard of a Sunday school in which a class of 
boys has kept a scrapbook for years, devoting a num- 
ber of pages to each member. Among other things 
the book contains pictures of each boy at different 
ages, facts about their school and college careers, and 
other matters of mutual interest. Today, although 
they are men in business now, it is an invariable rule 
that each writes to all the others on their birthdays. 


O God our Father, good beyond all that is 
good, fair beyond all that is fair, in whom is 
calmness and peace; Make up, we beseech thee, 
the dissensions which divide us from each 
other, and bring us back into that unity of love 
which is the likeness of thy sublime nature; 
that bound together in thy Spirit, we may 

“know that peace of thine which maketh all 
things one; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


47 
Money 


Each of your pupils should give an offering which 
represents his own efforts, his own generosity. The 
money should be either saved or earned. Most chil- 
dren spend considerable money on themselves every 
week for candy, gum, movies, and other pleasures. 
They can earn money by shovelling snow, running 
errands, doing housework, etc. You must enlist their 


102 CREATIVE TEACHING 


interest in the particular cause for which the money 
is given. This is easily done because the cause, when 
presented through actual cases and true stories, is in 
itself interesting, even thrilling. 

Your aim should be to train your boys in the Chris- 
tian use of money; to teach them stewardship. You 
want them to recognize the giving of money as a part 
of the worship and service of God. As each penny or 
dime or quarter is offered, the giver should say a 
prayer, if only the three words, “Thy kingdom come.” 


48 
MISSIONARY-MINDEDNESS 


Try to keep the “missionary note” in evidence in 
your class. Do not teach missions as if it were a 
separate subject, but inculcate in your pupils the feel- 
ing that the Church to which they belong exists every 
year of its life for a missionary purpose. Put a map — 
of the world shaded to show the Christian and non- 
Christian territory where they can look:at it often. 
Keep them familiar with a few very general and — 
striking statistics, in round numbers, showing what 
proportion of the human race knows about Christ. 
Let them understand that belonging to the Christian 
Church means that they belong to a spiritual army 
whose business it is to carry the light of Christ to 
all mankind, and to stamp out the powers of dark- 
ness represented by ignorance, or sin, or disease, or 
other forms of impotence. Our Lord said, “I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly.” This ideal has not yet reached 
its fulfillment. The Christian army exists to carry 
to its completion the avowed purpose of its Leader. 


YOUR CLASS 103 


This attitude of missionary-mindedness is one which 
ought to be taken for granted by you and your pupils, 
and everything that you and they plan or do ought 
to be looked upon as a contribution on your part to 
this central aim. Try to make it the controlling and 
dominating idea which shapes everything you under- 
take. You must be a missionary yourself, and must 
make them missionaries. In fact you must give the 
word a new meaning, for your pupils probably have 
picked up wrong ideas from references to it which 
they have heard in the past. 


49 
PRAYER 


One of the central duties of a Church-school teacher 
is to deepen and enlighten the devotional life of the 
pupils. This applies both to public worship and to 
private prayer. You must induce your pupils to cul- 
tivate the faculty of prayer, the ability to worship. 
Together with them you must provide the climate in 
which these can grow. It is your business to give them 
new powers. 

I have said that the lesson must culminate in some 
special act of worship or service. A lesson that they 
finish learning by an act of worship enables the boys 
in your class to take part heartily and more intel- 
ligently in some regular service of the Church. Sup- 
pose you have a lesson on penitence, or the confession 
of sins. Your aim will be to teach these boys what 
they ought to do about their sorrow for the wrong 
things they have done; to make them feel the dis- 
loyalty to their best friend, Christ, involved in doing 
wrong; and to make them want to add their silent 


104 CREATIVE TEACHING 


personal confession to the prayers rising from the 
Church service as the beginning and impetus of a new 
start. ‘These matters should be discussed in the class- 
room. Then arrange to meet the class by appoint- 
ment on a certain day and go with them to a Church 
service, either the Holy Communion or some other 
service of worship. Part of the classroom work 
was an explanation of the nature of true confes- 
sion. You explained the whole purpose and meaning 
of prayer in the work of bringing confession to a 
happy issue, showing its intention and significance not 
only for Christendom in general but for their indi- 
vidual, particular lives. In consequence, when you 
meet the class in church on that appointed day you 
and they have a special common purpose. During the 
moments of prayer you and they enter into that act 
more deeply, and with greater understanding, than 
usual. Then it is that your lesson on penitence reaches 
its culmination. 

This is only an isolated example. The point is that 
all through the school year you are making yourself 
their leader,* taking them through a sequence of ex- — 
periences in public worship, and shedding light on 
these experiences as you go. 

In the matter of private prayer your task is even 
more important because more personal. Here your 
work approaches very nearly to that of a parent,? for 
you are the private tutor of each pupil. If prayer is 
one of the most real factors in your own life it will 
not be difficult for you to prepare the way for it to 
take a like precedence in the lives of these boys. 
Do not be content to give them printed prayers and 
suggest that they use them. They have their Biases of 


1 Letter 2. 2 Letter 7. 


YOUR CLASS 105 


usefulness, but the important thing is to establish them 
in the practice of giving their help to one project after 
another through their prayers. Let it be obvious to 
them that your object is to secure their help. Sup- 
pose that your nearest relative or dearest friend is 
very ill; or that you are facing a most perplexing 
question and have got to come to a decision within 
a few days. Very well—you are a Christian. Noth-. 
ing could be more natural, therefore, than for you to 
turn to your friends and ask them to bring into play 
on this personal problem the power of their prayers. 
Sometimes a teacher lays the matter before the whole 
class openly. At other times the teacher will prefer 
to ask one pupil only, or all the pupils individually. 
Sometimes this is done by a written note handed to 
them in a sealed envelope. There are ever so many 
ways when it comes to the details of procedure. Think 
these out for yourself. Use your ingenuity and your 
common sense. Use variety. Do not always do the 
same thing in the same way. Whatever your method, 
the point is that by taking prayer seriously and using 
it in, the practical issues of life, you will implant both 
the theory and practice of prayer in their natures much 
better than you could by the best course of lectures 
in the world. Naturally the plan is meant to be 
reciprocal. Your pupils must be encouraged to ask 
you to help them with your prayers. 

Both you and they have a prayer life. This prayer 
life grows and matures and deepens from year to year, 
not only in the case of the boys but also in your own 
case, for in this phase of life no one ever fully grows 
up. Remember that a teacher is a leader and a 
spiritual parent and a friend. In the prayer life of 
your pupils you must be all these things. 


106 CREATIVE TEACHING 


Find out whether the prayers they say at home are 
in keeping with their circumstances and age. It is 
a very serious mistake for a boy of twelve to use noth- 
ing but prayers for five-year-olds. It is almost as 
grotesque as for him to wear five-year-old clothes. 
It cramps and tires his spirit and prevents a. healthy 
circulation of ideas through his soul. It may teach 
him to look upon religion as a childish and UnWwOrUly. 
enterprise. 

Be constantly on the lookout for them and pass on 
to your pupils ideas for improving their command over 
prayer. Some things you have discovered for your- 
self have helped you. Tell them about these. One 
person whose daily prayers seemed to be going stale 
pulled himself out of the rut by the simple expedient 
of taking a pencil and paper and writing to God 
instead of talking with Him orally. Just this little 
change of medium made all the difference suddenly 
between the lifeless and the vivid and real. The letter, 
of course, was torn up or burned each night. There 
was no attempt at literary style. Some find it helps 
them to pray out loud every other night and silently 
on the alternate nights. Some people have found that 
it brings their minds to a focus to use a different lan- 
guage for prayer, for instance French. Anyone who 
knows more than one language has at hand this ready 
means of escape from vagrancy and unreality. You 
will be able to think of other plans yourself. Plans 
may come and go provided prayer goes on without any 
lapses. The principal thing is that you should be 
thinking about these things and talking about them 
with your pupils. Prayer is a great and fascinating 
field in which you and your boys should be fellow- 
explorers. 


YOUR CLASS 107 


Almighty God, who knowest how often we 
sin against thee with our lips; Consecrate our 
speech to thy service, and keep us often silent, 
that our hearts may speak to thee and listen for 
thy voice; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


50 
WorsHIP 1s ACTIVE 


In learning under your guidance to worship (either 
in private or in public) be sure that the underlying 
spirit of your pupils in their devotions is one of cheer 
and confidence. Never let them associate with wor- 
ship the ideas of dreariness or pathos or despair. En- 
trance into the presence of God is always an invigorat- 
ing and positively joyful experience. If it is not, then 
the worshipper has been taught the wrong things both 
about God and about worship. 

Be sure also that the pupils feel that in entering 
into worship they are entering upon an activity. Wor- 
ship is not something that is done for you or to you. 
It is something that is done by you. Each of us has to 
do his own worshipping. Be sure, therefore, when 
you lead your pupils, that they realize that it is they 
who pray, they who sing, they who give thanks or 
praise. In other words, be sure that their worship is 
real to them. It will be their very own, and active, 
and enjoyed, provided that God is real to them. 


51 


TEACHING How To Stupy 


Part of a teacher’s business is to see that his pupils 
learn how to study. Do not just tell them how and 


108 CREATIVE TEACHING 


let it go at that. Show them how. In the early part 
of the school year it will probably pay to take at least 
half, if not whole, lesson-periods for exercises with this 
aim. Gather your pupils around you and say, “Now 
I am going to pretend that I am one of you, and I 
am going to study and prepare a lesson.” ‘Then go 
through the actual process, step by step, leaving out | 
nothing. Use every book and leaflet, paper or note- 
book, exactly as the pupil would do. When it comes 
to reading an assigned passage read it out loud. (This 
will be the only difference between what you do and 
what the pupil would do at home.) When it comes 
to writing, do the actual writing. In other words, give 
a perfect demonstration, and explain as you go the 
reasons for doing the different things and the best way 
of doing each. It may also be helpful to set one pupil 
the task of giving a similar demonstration in the 
presence of the class in the near future. You will 
modify this method in detail according to your own 
judgment and ingenuity. The point is that you must 
leave no doubt in your pupils’ minds as to what you 
mean when you tell them to study at home. 


52 
Homer WorkK 


Take up the question of assigned home work with 
the parents of your pupils and come to a definite 
understanding. In view of the real importance of: 
religion in the lives of the boys, and remembering also 
the amount of time available in an average week 
for their entire program of activities, decide upon a 
certain length for the home-study period—for instance, 
half an hour or an hour, according to circumstauces. 


YOUR CLASS 109 


Once determined, make it a public and not a private 
concern. Let it be known throughout the parish and 
let the minister have his share in holding the pupils 
up to it as the standard. It helps very much if the 
entire Church-school faculty and all the parents in 
the parish come to the one agreement. This is a 
matter not for one teacher to struggle with unaided, 
but for a whole congregation to decide upon after 
careful public consideration. 

Make your assignment each week perfectly definite, 
and of such a nature that it can all be done and well 
done within the time-limit. You can then put all your 
weight into getting it done and done well. Do not 
assign too much, but have the boys exact of themselves 
every bit of what you assign. 


53 
MARKING 


A careful and simple marking system serves as a 
stimulus to good work on the part of pupil, teacher, 
and parent. It is possible to overdo marking and to 
let it wander off into intricacies of over-analysis. For 
example, a pupil should never be marked for attention 
or order. (If any one were to be marked for these 
it ought to be the teacher.) Do not give marks for 
the performance or non-performance of minor duties, 
such as bringing a lesson-book. On the other hand, 
in addition to recording the facts of attendance and 
punctuality it often seems wise to mark pupils for the 
quality of their work as students. In giving a pupil 
his rank or standing, take into consideration as many 
items as you choose, provided that you subject all 
your pupils to these same tests. Faithfulness and 


110 CREATIVE TEACHING 


earnest effort should of course be recognized as well 
as actual results. Note all good work with approval. 
It is a mistake to give prizes or bribes, such as watches 
or baseballs or even books, for doing the ordinary work 
that naturally falls to pupils in a school. But a form 
of recognition which has no monetary value may be 
helpful. One teacher, after reading the written work 
of the pupils, places her initials in a certain corner of 
the page if the quality of the work justifies. it. This 
recognition is greatly coveted, and thus acts as a 
powerful incentive. Another method is for the school 
to take the notebooks which have reached a certain 
degree of excellence and have them stitched and bound 
in cloth-board, with the pupil’s name, the name of 
the school, and the date stamped in gold on the out- 
side. . 


O God, who hast taught us to trust in thee 
as our Father; Open our hearts to share the 
faith which thou hast revealed to us in thy 
Son, until the littleness of our knowledge be- 
comes lost in the greatness of thy love; through 
the same, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 


YOUR SCHOOL 





YOUR SCHOOL 
54 


Tue ScHOOL 


What is a Church school and what is it for? The 
most complete and in some ways the best answer is 
this: A Church school instructs and trains children 
and youth to become mature Christians in action in 
the Church and in the community.2. Every phrase 
of this statement has been carefully chosen and stands 
for a definite principle. 
It must be a Church school, that is to say, run by 
the Church and paid for by it, and governed by Church 
ideals. If it is a Baptist Church school, it ought to 
bear the stamp of the Baptist communion; if it is a 
Congregational Church school, one ought to find in it 
the,.atmosphere and flavor of the Congregational 
Church. Every school ought to inculcate loyalty to 
the principles of its communion. And this should > 
be done in the interest of good education. I am not “«t< 
thinking now of the importance of the various com- 
munions in themselves. What I am concerned with 
here is the simple psychological fact that religious 
education is better as education if it trains children 
in a wholesome Church loyalty. The two extremes of 
half-heartedness and bigotry are both to be avoided. 
What we want is enlighteriéd loyalty. Loyalty is 
based upon affection. We begin with affection and 
1G. A. Coe. \ fav wSleat> : TRANSL OS iM ov Case by Teton, 
118 Caudls, , pricerea, Sane tue lls, 


WS hee and a | 


114 CREATIVE TEACHING 


end with loyalty. This is a universal human experi- 
ence, whether you are dealing with individuals or 
institutions. 

It must be a school. It must be administered like 
a school, with proper responsibility all up and down 
the line from pupil to teacher, from teacher to super- 
visor, from supervisor to superintendent, from super- 
intendent to minister. It must educate. ‘T’o educate 
means to instruct and train. Instruction means im- 
parting facts and ideas. That is a purely mental 
process. It consists of exercises in thought. ‘Train- 
ing means teaching people how to do things. A per- 
son needs to be trained to row a boat or to knit or to 
sing or to live a certain type of life. Any institution 
which confines its efforts to instruction and leaves out 
training thereby ceases to live up to its name as an 
educational institution. On the other hand any or- 
ganization which merely trains without instructing 
thereby becomes equally non-educational. When you 
both instruct and train, then and then only do you 
educate. : 

Furthermore, to be a good school the teaching which 
takes place within its walls must be good teaching. A 
school is as good as the teaching that actually takes 
place in it, and no better. The character of the service 
rendered by a school can never rise above the level of 
excellence of the teaching that goes on in it. This is 
the paramount reason why your position as teacher is 
so important. You are one of the few most influential 
people in determining the value of your school. All 
this sounds very obvious, but you would be surprised 
if you knew how many superintendents and clergymen 
judge their Church schools by almost any stand- 
ard under heaven except that of the quality of the 


YOUR SCHOOL 115 


teaching done in them. A school is called in splendid 
condition because it is big, or because it is administered 
without friction, or because it sings well, or because it 
maintains a good record of attendance. All these are 
important, and indicate a tendency to excellence; but 
they do not touch the heart of the matter. If a school 
excels in all these points and the teachers mismanage 
or bungle their work, it is not a good school. 

The important implication in the phrase children 
and youth is the fact that the school should take 
religious care of a child until he has graduated from 
High School presumably at the age of seventeen or 
eighteen. Post-graduate classes should be held for 
young people from eighteen to twenty-one, after which 
they proceed to the adult department where the unit 
of education is not the school but the class. 

Mature Christians. This phrase describes the prod- 
uct of a Church school. We use the word “mature” of 
every person, no matter what his age, who can qualify 
as a full-fledged Christian of his age. A six-year-old 
child can be a full-fledged six-year-old Christian, enter- 
ing ‘with all his heart and mind into the modes of 
religious expression appropriate to his age. On the 
other hand, if his religious training has been neglected 
or omitted he may to all intents and purposes be not 
a Christian at all, but a little human animal with a 
stunted and undernourished spiritual life. There are 
all too many religious orphans in the Church—children 
whose parents have let them go spiritually unborn. 
Others are religious weaklings, their parents not having 
trained them for the “good works that God has pre- 
pared for them to walk in.’ Such children have by 
no means reached the Christian maturity perfectly 
feasible at their own age. You see then that in these 


116 CREATIVE TEACHING 


cases “mature” does not mean something reached at 
one fixed age, it means the normal spiritual stature 
for your own age whatever that age happens to be. 

Of course the word Christian is so full of meaning 
that it would take a whole book to unfold it. It is 
enough for our present purpose to say simply.that it 
means to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and 
be made like unto Him. 

The phrase in action finds a place in our definition 
to remind us that a life of ideals, however high, which 
never get translated into active living, cannot be a 
truly Christian life. This point is discussed in the 
letter on ‘What is a Lesson?”* 

The phrase in the Church and in the community 
indicates the double necessity that Christian social 
behavior shall include both the fellow members of 
our household of faith and also all men, women, and 
children of every name and condition and race. To 
be a good neighbor to fellow Churchmen only, is to 
be less than Christian. 

The test of a Church school is found-in this ques- 
tion, “What difference has this school made in these 
children?” It is similar to the test of the work of 
a teacher which is measured by the question, “In what 
respects are these boys or girls different because of 
their experiences as members of my class?” Of course, 
they would be different in some respects each year 
from what they were the year before anyway. They 
are growing up and therefore changing. The question — 
is, What changes have been wrought in them by your 
school? What effect has it had upon them to belong 
to your class? In what directions has the experience 
made them grow? These are terrifying questions, as 


1 Letter 23. 


YOUR SCHOOL 117 


we have seen previously. It is quite possible for a 
Church school to do harm. It will certainly do some- 
thing. It cannot possibly leave its pupils just as they 
were before. The experience of a child in a Church 
school ought to be the experience of “progressively 
acquiring and putting into practice Christian knowl- 
edge and ideals, and thus growing in the ability to 
live like Christ.” 

If, you want to give yourself good intellectual and 
spiritual exercise, sit down some day and try to write 
out a clear statement of the aim of Christian religious 
education. Here are some attempts that have been 
made by various students in the past decade: 

To form Christian character for the extension of 
the kingdom of God. 

To enable a child to know his Father and to take his 
place in his Father’s house, the Church. (Or king- 
dom.) 

To cause Christ to live in all people. 


Send out thy light and thy truth, O God, 
and lead me through the mists of ignorance, 
“vanity, and fear, into the clear shining of the 
perfect day of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ.” 


55 
GUARDIAN ANGELS 


If you really undertake the spiritual guidance of 
your pupils along the lines suggested in the letters 
that I have already written, it may seem to you that 
six or eight boys are too many. When so much is 


1 Letters 16 and 43. 
2H. S. Nash. 


118 CREATIVE TEACHING 


required of you, you may jump to the conclusion that 
one pupil would be enough to be responsible for. 
But you must remember that in this work you are 
not alone. Theoretically there surrounds each child 
a group of grown-ups who have his spiritual growth 
at heart. I mean his mother and father, his favorite 
aunt or uncle, his pastor, and his Church-school 
teacher. I am aware that too often some of them do 
not take their responsibility as seriously as they should. 
In any event the minister, the Church-school 
teacher, and one parent ought to have a conference at 
least once a year. It would take a good deal of time, 
especially for a minister, who might have to take part 
in two or three hundred conferences each year; but 
his time could hardly be better spent. We are so 
busy and our civilization is so complicated that we 
often fail to put the time in that we should on this 
kind of duty. Perhaps you can help to bring about 
meetings of this kind in regard to each of your pupils. 


56 
SPONSORS 


I wonder if you realize how very valuable god- 
parents can be to your child. I know one family 
where the mother has taken pains to place in each 
child’s room the pictures of his godparents. She 
talks about them to her children from time to time, 
and they exchange letters with them at least on their. 
birthdays and at Christmas. The children are made 
to feel from the very start that they can turn to their 
godparents any time for help and advice quite as 
readily as to their parents. Thus it is made and kept 
@ spiritual and friendly relationship. 


YOUR SCHOOL 119 


At the service of Confirmation all the godparents 
of the candidates who can possibly do so should be 
present, being especially invited by the minister. In 
some parishes the godparents go forward and stand 
behind the class at the time of Confirmation, signifying 
the fact that they now lay down the responsibility 
which the children take on their own shoulders. I 
wonder if you are doing all you can to encourage the 
proper relationship between your pupils and their 
godparents. | 


O God, who makest cheerfulness the com- 
panion of strength; Grant us so to rejoice in 
the gift of thy power, that being freed from all 
fretfulness and despair we may glorify thee in 
word and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 


(ear 
ent y 
SR 
Mai 
ies 


wy 
in 
A 


’ MEay Tye tr 





YOUR CHURCE 





YOUR CHURCH 


57 
A TreacuHine CHURCH 


The Christian Church is essentially a teaching 
Church. This is because the Christian’s God is by 
character a teaching God. The most important thing 
about God is His character. Keep this in mind when 
you try to make Him more real to your pupils. 

For a great many centuries men and women had a 
mistaken or inadequate idea of what God is like. They 
knew of His existence, but their ideas about His char- 
acter were forbidding, and sometimes depressing. Ig- 
norance about God and sin against God were making 
a dreadful world. 

Finally God decided to teach His people what He 
was really like. He chose the method of the Incar- 
nation, that is to say, He became a Man, with all that 
belonging to humanity implies—birth, growth, work, 
suffering, death. It is perfectly clear that He did 
this in order to teach. It was in the strictest sense a 
lesson. The method was that of absolute and perfect 
demonstration. In order to teach man how to live 
He came down and lived a human life. In order to 
show man what God is like He came and achieved 
a human character which perfectly reflected the char- 
acter of God. The life of Jesus of Nazareth, meaning 
His entire life including thoughts, words, and deeds, 

123 


124 CREATIVE TEACHING 


constitutes the greatest piece of teaching that ever 
took place in history. These are the ideas that lie 
behind the naming of Christ as the Word of God. 

Therefore, the Church is a teaching Church, and 
practically everything that it does is done in the 
service of its teaching mission. 


58 
Tur TEACHING SACRAMENT 


The Lord’s Supper is a teaching Sacrament. If you 
recall the events which led up to the final meeting 
between our Lord and His chosen disciples in the 
upper room, you will see that the institution of the 
Holy Communion was a climax in a career of teaching. 
Jesus had come to show men what God is truly like 
and to induce them as God’s children to live the same 
life. During the years of His ministry He had ex- 
hausted language to execute this commission. By the 
use of every available means—sermon, parable, simile, 
exhortation—he had taxed the human vocabulary 
to its utmost. He now found Himself facing His 
special pupils in what one may call a last meeting of 
His class. There was absolutely nothing more that 
He could say to them in words. He had tried many, 
many forms of expression, and had found in them as 
in his larger audiences an almost unlimited capacity 
to misunderstand. Here was one last chance to teach 
His lesson in a way that could not fail to flash the 
light even into their darkened minds. And what did 
He do? He had recourse to a method which ever 
since the beginning of time has proved fruitful. He 
dramatized His message in a few simple acts. He took 
bread, and breaking it, said, “This is what I mean! 


YOUR CHURCH 125 


The broken life is what God calls you to live. Take 
the spirit of self-sacrifice into your lives and let it 
control you.” Then He took wine and poured it, 
saying, “This is what I mean! The poured-out life 
given freely for others, as I am giving mine for you. 
Take this into your very souls and live it.” 

The disciples watched and listened. They ate and 
drank, and understood. And the power of that lesson 
is testified to by the fact that for nineteen centuries 
numberless disciples breaking bread together have 
repeated its teaching, in all languages and all lands. 


59 
PROGRESS 


I have already written of the need of motion or 
progress in the development of a lesson. There is 
a deeper significance here, however, than you might 
at first suppose. You must try to make your pupils 
realize that the whole Church is in motion. It exists 
for progress. It moves forward under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit. When you join the Christian 
Church you become a member of a group which is 
not standing still but going somewhere. 

The most ancient symbol of the Church is a ship. 
A ship must have a captain, and our captain is Christ. 
It must also have a compass and chart and anchor 
for safety. None of these, however, is of much use 
while the ship is tied up at the dock. A ship that 
remained fixed and immovable would be indistinguish- 
able from a lighthouse or a pier. The purpose of a 
ship is to carry people to their destination. 'The wind 
needs to blow and fill the sails, and the ship bend to 


1Letters 21 and 22. 


126 CREATIVE TEACHING 


the breeze, as it squares away on its course under the 
leadership of its captain. 

Progress is essential to the Christian religion. We 
are on a quest, moving out of darkness into light, out 
of ignorance into knowledge, out of weakness into 
power. Our Lord said, “When He, the Spirit of Truth, 
is come, He will guide you into all truth.” 


60 
RELIGION 1s ACTIVE 


Anyone who is going to follow Christ must Think 
and Believe and Feel and Do. You see from this 
that Christ calls us to an active life. 3 

We must Think. Since our minds come from God 
they are meant for use. We must consecrate our in- 
telligence and keep it alert to do its part in the work 
for God’s kingdom. It is not enough to have good 
impulses and intentions. We must also think out sound 
ways and means. We must be properly informed, not 
merely inspired. | , 

We must Believe. Loyal Christians can differ when 
it comes to the details of the faith, but it is a mark 
of Christian character to have convictions, and to 
believe what we individually believe not, only verbally 
but with our whole life. It is not a sign of intellectual 
superiority to believe little, any more than it is to 
believe much. In fact, a half-hearted or a small area 
of belief may indicate intellectual sloth, just as too 
large an area of belief (over-credulity) may indicate 
careless and indifferent acceptance. “It is as easy to 
be hoodwinked into believing too little as it is to be 
hoodwinked into believing too much.” 

We must Feel. Emotions form part of the best life. 


YOUR CHURCH 127 


Joy and appreciation and compassion and mercy find 
free expression in the life of any true disciple of Christ. 
Our religion ought not to appear to pupils as if it were 
a cold-blooded exercise, or an impersonal proposition. 
We must awaken their enthusiasm. 

Finally, we must Do. I have already said a good 
deal in regard to this in other letters.’ 

If you will consider well, you will find that to fulfil 
-any three of these without the fourth is to engage in 
something less than true religion. A person who be- 
lieves wholesale and is full of emotion and busy as a 
bee all the time, without using his mind, will somehow 
be disappointed in the results. He fails to dedicate his 
whole personality to God. On the other hand, a per- 
son who feels things deeply and accomplishes a good 
deal within certain lines and thinks out many problems 
carefully, but yet never pays much of any attention 
to the matter of his religious beliefs, is living a hand-to- 
mouth existence, glaringly deficient in the element of 
permanence. Again, a person who is too cold-blooded 
to be thinking and believing and doing on the 
crest of a wave of deep feeling, knows no more of 
what’is going on on the heights than any other dweller 
on the plain. Finally, as our Lord pointed out in His 
parable about the rock and the sand, there is little or 
no genuine substance to the person who thinks and 
feels and believes copiously, but does not do anything 
about it. 

With these thoughts in mind, keep asking yourself 
whether the experience into which you are leading 
your pupils is really religion. 


1 Letters 3, 23, 33, 44, 45, 50. 


{ 


a ~ 





YOUR READING 


A ie SOV, v 
\ bh Mt ; 
} pan Ay 





YOUR READING 


61 
REAL CHILDREN 


Read books about children. I do not mean psycho- 
logical books on “The Child,” but real stories about 
real children. For instance: 

My Lirrtet Boy. Carl Ewald. Scribner. 

PauL AND FiamMMeEtTTs, L. Allen Harker. Scribner. 

Mary Lez. Geoffrey Dennis. Knopf. 

JEREMY. Hugh Walpole. Doran. 

Una Mary. Una Hunt. Scribner. 


62 
A WatcHFuL HyE 


Watch for appropriate articles and pictures. Cut 
thenr out, bind them between pasteboard covers, list 
them, and make a reference library of them. The 
National Geographic Magazine, for instance, often 
carries remarkably well-illustrated accounts of places 
where Christian missions are situated, and occasionally 
intimate descriptions of present-day living in the Holy 
Land. Pictures make splendid wall-decorations for 
your classroom. 

Keep your eyes open. Gather in helps from all 
quarters. Exercise your ingenuity. Ask, in regard to 
whatever you see or hear: Can this be made to serve 
my pupils? Literature can be drawn on, art, the 

131 


132 CREATIVE TEACHING 


theater, music, news, novels, museums, nature—there 
is no end! The world is your book if you have eyes 
to see and ears to hear, and a real teacher is known 
by her eyes and ears rather than by her tongue. 

Are you a teacher? 2 


63 
Books 


If you have read these letters and digested them 
you will be able now to study “religious pedagogy” 
or “educational psychology.” There are many inter- 
esting books on these subjects. Let me introduce some 
of them to you. 

You will find a great deal of information in 

CHILDHOOD AND CHaracter. H. Hartshorne. Pilgrim 
Press. 3 

Three other books in the same field are 

LovE AND Law IN Cuiup Tratnine. Emilie Poulsson. 
Bradley. ; ; 

GuipE Book to Cu1~pHOop, William B. Forbush. Jacobs. 

Cuitp Stupy aND Cuitp Traininc. William B. For- 
bush. Scribner. 

A book which has helped many teachers, parents, 
and ministers is 

Tue TRAINING oF CHILDREN IN RBELIGION. George 
Hodges. Appleton. 

A small pamphlet which may be difficult to buy, 
but which you will find in libraries, and which is well 
worth looking for, is 

THE Sunpay-ScHoo,t TEacHER. George Hodges. New 
York S. 8. Com. 


A textbook very widely read and studied in the past 


YOUR READING 133 


decade, which contains a great many suggestions well 
worth knowing, is 

Puriu AND TEAcHER. Luther Weigle. Pilgrim Press. 

Another book by the same author is 

Tatks To SunpAy-ScHooL TracHers. Luther Weigle. 
Pilgrim Press. 

Also, 

How to Tracu Renicion. George H. Betts. Abingdon 
Press. 
is a helpful study, well written and worth knowing. 


In the field of general education there are two books 
bearing on the subject of teaching which are so fine 
that one would like to require every Church-school 
teacher to own them and read parts of them from 
time to time. These are 

THe TracHer. George H. Palmer. Houghton, Mifflin. 

TaLKs To TEACHERS ON PsycHoLocy. William James. 
Henry Holt & Co. 

And do not deny yourself the pleasure of reading 

SHACKLED YouTH. Hdward Yeomans. Atlantic Monthly 
Press. 

This is a collection of brilliant essays dealing with 
the qualities of spiritedness and imagination in teach- 
ing. 

Unconscious Tuition. F. D, Huntington. Flanagan. 
is an extremely good treatment of the phases of teach- 
ing which cannot be reduced to rule. 


The following books by Elizabeth Harrison will be 
useful: 

WHEN CHILDREN Err. Macmillan. 

A Srupy or Cui~p Naturg. Macmillan. 


134 CREATIVE TEACHING 


When you decide to take a self-administered course 
in the subject of teaching-methods, reading perhaps 
two books every month, or let us say 100 pages a 
week, try this list: 

How to Tracu. Strayer and Norsworthy. Macmillan. 

Tue Art or Treacuine. Joshua G. Fitch. Abingdon 
Press. 

ELEMENTS OF Reticious Prpacocy. F. L. Pattee. 
Methodist Book Concern. 

Seven Laws or TreacHine. Gregory-Bagley-Layton. 
Pilgrim Press. 

Tue Pornt or Contact In TreacHine. Patterson Du- 
Bows. Dodd, Mead. | 

SECURING AND RETAINING ATTENTION. J. L. Hughes. A. 
S. Barnes. 

Tue Art oF SecuRING ATTENTION. Joshua G. Fitch. 
Abingdon Press. 

Tue Art or QusestioniInc. H.H. Horne. Pilgrim Press. 

Tue Art or Qusstioninae. Joshua Fitch. Flanagan. 

How to Krep Orper. J. L. Hughes. Flanagan. 

THE Use oF Motives In TracuHine Moraus anp R&LI- 
gion. Thomas W. Galloway. Pilgrim Press. 

How to Stupy. Frank M. McCurry. Houghton, Mifflin 
Co. 
How to Puan a Lesson. Marianna C. Brown. Revell. 

Tue Metuop or THE Recitation. J. A. & F. M. Mc- 
Murry. Macmillan. 

Tue Recitation. George H. Betts. Houghton, Mifflin. 

HANDWORK IN THE SuNDAy-ScHOOL. Milton Lnttlefield. 
New York S. 8. Com. 


When you wish to add further to your knowledge 
of both education and religious education in general, 
read 


CHANGING CoNCEPTIONS oF EpucaTion. Ellwood P. 
Cubberly. Houghton, Mifflin. 


YOUR READING 135 


Democracy AND Epucation. John Dewey. Macmillan. 

EDUCATION IN RELIGION AND Morats. George Albert 
Coe. Revell. 

EpucaTION For Democracy. Henry F. Cope. Macmillan. 

ORGANIZING THE CHuRCH ScHooL. Henry Frederick 
Cope. Doran. 

PHILOSOPHY oF Enucation. H. H. Horne. Macmillan. 

IDEALISM IN Epucation. H. H. Horne. Macmillan. 

Wuaris Epucation? Ernest Carroll Moore. Ginn. 

A Socitan THrory or Rexicious Epucation. George 
Albert Coe. Scribner. 


On the subject of worship and prayer this list will 
help: 

Wuy Men Pray. C. L. Slattery. Macmillan. 

How to Pray. C. L. Slattery. Macmillan. 

SetF-TRAINING IN Prayer. Alan H. McNeile. Long- 
mans. | 

A Book or Prayers For Stupents. The Student Chris- 
tian Movement. London. 

Srrvices oF Worsuip ror Boys. H. W. Gibson. Associa- 
tion Press. | 

A Daty Orrerine. Alan H. McNeile. Longmans. 

TRAINING THE DevoTionaL Lirgr. Weigle and Tweedy. 
Pilgrim Press. 

Tue Way or Worsuip. Hetty Lee. The National 
Society’s Depository, London. 

THe Art oF Pusiic WorsHip. Percy Dearmer. More- 
house Publ. Co. 

EvERYMAN’s History OF THE Prayer Boox. Percy 
Dearmer. Morehouse Publ. Co. 

THe Propie’s Book or Worsuip. Suter and Addison. 
Macmillan. 

TEACHER’S PrayeR Book. Alfred Barry. Thos. Nelson. 

Tue Book or ComMoN Prayzr. Samuel Hart. The Uni- 
versity Press of Sewanne. 


136 CREATIVE TEACHING 


For Biblical topics there are so many books that it 
is hard to select a few for mention. First let me refer 
you to a printed list: 

SPECTACLES FoR BrsLE READERS. N ash, Whee & Clark. 
Wright and Potter, Boston. 

In addition here are just a few titles: 

How to Know THE Biste. George Hodes. Bobbs- 
Merrill. 7 

HumAN NAtTurRE OF THE Saints. George Hodges. Mac- 
millan. 

Tue Source-Book FOR THE Lirm or Curist. H. Van 
Kirk. Revell. 

Wuy I Betinve in Rezicion. Charles R. Brown. Mac- 
millan. 

THE MannHoop or THE Master. Harry Emerson Fos- 
dick. Association Press. 

Tue InneER Lire. Rufus M. Jones. Macmillan. 

Jesus CHRIST AND THE Spirit or YoutH. Frank IIsley 
Paradise. Small, Maynard. 

THE Apostims” Creep Topay. Hdward S. DiGi Mac- 
millan. | 

THE CREATIVE Curist. Edward S. Drown. Macmillan. 

Jesus oF NazaretH. George A. Barton. Macmillan. 


In your library also it would be good to include 

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE Faminty. Henry F. Cope. 
University of Chicago Press. 

Hymns You Oucut to Know. Henry F. Cope. Revell. 

Every teacher wants to know more and more about 
stories—not only where they can be found, but how 
one’s story-telling ability can be improved. To this end 
you will probably find help in some of the books here 
mentioned: 


MANUAL oF Stories. William B. Forbush. Jacobs. 


YOUR READING 137 


Tue Usk oF StTorIEs IN Reticious Epucation. Margaret 
W. Eggleston. Doran. 

Wuat SHAut WE Reap To Our CuitpREN? Clara Hunt. 
Houghton, Mifflin. 

How to Treiut Stories to Cumpren. Sara C. Bryant. 
Houghton, Mifflin. 

In Strory-Lanp. Elizabeth Harrison. Macmillan. 

StorY-TELLING, QUESTIONING, AND Strupyine. dH. H. 
Horne. Macmillan. 

TELLING BistE Stories. Louise Seymour Houghton. 
Scribner. 

OFFERO, THE Giant. Elizabeth Harrison. Macmillan. 

Srories AND Strory-Tenuina. EH. P. St. John. Pilgrim 
Press. 

Pictures are closely associated with stories. Try 
reading: 

PIcTURES AND Picture Work. W. L. Hervey. Revell. 

How to SHow PicturEs To CuiupREN. Estelle Hurll. 
Houghton, Mifflin. 

64 


Worps 


In many of these books you will find described, ex- 
plained, and advocated much the same principles and 
methods which I have told you about in these letters. 
One difference will be that many writers of such books 
have a set of special words peculiar to themselves and 
to their topics. These words you will have to learn 
in order to be able to understand the books and to 
converse with their authors. 

It is a very good plan, however, to learn the ideas 
first and then give them new names if necessary. Psy- 
chology is one of the very newest sciences, and so it has 
not yet driven its roots very deep into our life or 
settled down very comfortably into our language. Per- 


138 CREATIVE TEACHING 


haps it may truthfully be said that modern writers on 
psychology and education employ the most conspicuous 
language of all the students of our time. They are 
born vocabulists. Some of them could even be called 
“lexicontortionists.” | | 

“T am a profound believer,” says a contemporary, 
“in the theory so well expounded by Lewis Carroll, 
who put into the mouth of Humpty-Dumpty a phrase 
of undying significance when he made him say that 
‘words should be made to mean what you want them 
to mean.’ The only people I know who adhere strictly 
to this principle are the psychologists: that is why I 
love to hear a psychologist talk. Of course, I under- 
stand not a word he is saying, but it is a noble and 
an inspiring spectacle to see a mere human being crack 
a whip over an entire vocabulary and see the words 
jump up on their little red chairs like so many trained 
seals.”’* 

A good deal that the psychologists have written is 
really a systematic and somewhat scientific presenta- 
tion of ideas almost as old as the race. Psychology is 
a name for the patient observation of how the human 
mind conducts its activities, and the most orderly and 
connected account of the results of these observations. 

Many ideas which for generations have been a part 
of ordinary household rule-of-thumb wisdom and com- 
mon sense are now being dressed up in the precise 
language of science and we find it hard to recognize 
them as old acquaintances. Mothers and fathers have 
always been psychologists, that is to say observers and 
(as far as possible) influential formers of character. 

When you read modern books on psychology, there- 


1 [nterature with a Large “L,” and Fellow Travelers, by eae 
Jenkins. Houghton, Mifflin Co 


YOUR READING 139 


fore, do not be content to familiarize yourself with a 
lot of new words, but go beneath the surface and get 
at the meaning. Try to distinguish between old 
familiar ideas in a new dress on the one hand, and 
really new ideas based on sound inferences from them 
on the other. 

65 


“INFALLIBLES” OLD AND NEw 


Do not make the naive blunder of supposing that 
science is infallible. Neither psychology nor any other 
branch of science is free from error. An infallible 
science is just as impossible as an infallible Bible. 
People are wonderfully credulous, and love to accept a 
thing (no matter what) wholesale. There is just as 
good ground for giving your allegiance to an “infalli- 
ble” Bible as there is for an unconditional surrender 
to a so-called infallible science. The second is just 
as illogical as the first. 

What we really mean by science is a method: im- 
partial observation, comparison, and analysis; exper- 
imentation; careful tests; and so forth. There is no 
doubt that the scientific method is more conducive 
to an increase of knowledge than any other known 
human method; far superior, for instance, to magic. 
This is like saying that a modern rifle is superior to 
a bow and arrow. But to say that science can never 
go wrong would be like saying that you can never miss 
the mark with a rifle. 

When people tell you that a certain fact has been 
“scientically proved” there are still many things that 
you ought to want to know about it. What science 
proved it? Who was the scientist? Was the man 
who did the proving a reliable scholar? What was 


140 CREATIVE TEACHING 


his aim? What were his prejudices and his general 
tendencies? Do other scientists, with other back- 
grounds, agree with him? 

Even statistics are not infallible, for they are the 
fruit of man’s labor. Supposing someone asked two 
students to gather the data and make a chart show- 
ing how the citizens of a certain town were divided 
according to the color of their hair. One of the two 
students might report 96 people with red hair and 
the other 99. The point is that one man would con- 
sider the hair of a certain individual red and the 
other would call the same hair brown or auburn. 
Behind every set of statistics there is the judgment of 
some person who had to decide in what column to 
enter each item. Statistics may be scientific, but they 
are not always invariable or accurate, because they 
are of human manufacture. A color-blind student 
would have a difficult time gathering statistics of the 
various colors of hair. Yet there are students today 
who undertake to do things almost equally foolish. 
What else is a scientist who tries to make an analysis of 
the religious and spiritual factors of human life who 
has never experienced religion himself? Freely admit 
that no one ought to turn to a religious book like 
the Bible for facts on geology, but acknowledge also 
that no one ought to turn to the methods and text- 
books of the physical sciences for the facts and prin- 
ciples of religion. 

66 


HicHer Crrivricism 


You have asked me how you ought to deal with 
the difficult matter sometimes called “higher criticism.” 
Be absolutely frank. Whatever your attitude 


YOUR READING 141 


toward the Bible happens to be, reveal it without 
subterfuge to your pupils. Take them into your con- 
fidence. You and they are to study the Word of God 
together, and it would be ridiculous to suppose that 
you could look at it from one point of view for your- 
self and from another in your work with them. If you 
believe that there are scientific inadequacies and errors 
in parts of the Bible you must explain the case to your 
pupils, but show them also how it is possible for you 
to maintain great reverence for this wonderful Book as 
a guide in religion while openly admitting that it can- 
not possibly contain the last word on scientific matters. 
Show them that the fact that you do not go to the 
Bible for light on geology does not render it any less 
valuable to you as a book on religion. Or, we will 
say, you understand that there are many conflicting 
ideas about God in the Bible, and that the earlier ideas 
of His character are less complete and less satisfactory 
than the later. If this be your conviction about these 
points, or other similar matters, you must make them 
clear to your pupils. Remember that between you and 
them there exists a partnership. Nothing could be 
worse for them than for you to conceal or evade these 
points only to have knowledge of their existence 
forced upon them later in circles that are unfriendly 
to Christianity. 

There are many fantastic and untrustworthy books 
about the Bible, and it would be a mistake to think 
that every book which is recent and which tries to be 
scholarly is on that account good. We must. use our 
judgment in all things and select the best. 

It is possible (and of course very harmful) to put 
into the minds of children an exaggerated attitude of 


*Letter 4. 


142 CREATIVE TEACHING 


reverence and awe toward certain things in Scripture 
which the authors of those parts of the Bible would be 
the first to deplore. The Old Testament contains 
some stories retained partly for their human interest 
and partly for historical reasons not very closely as- 
sociated with religion. Children ought to be: allowed 
to enjoy these on the level at which they were orig- — 
inally written. We ought to smile with our children 
over the incongruities; we ought not to frown upon 
their recognition that the long bow has been drawn in 
the extravagant deeds of valor recorded in such tales 
as those about Samson. We ought to coach our chil- 
dren in a poetic appreciation of the story of the 
Garden of Eden, opening to them also its moral 
valué, its great simplicity and beauty, finer beyond all 
comparison than any other equally ancient description 
of the beginning of things. | 

The point which I am trying to make clear is that 
in these high matters it will not do to have any secrets 
from your pupils. There must be no pretence and no 
shams. Nothing but the naked truth as you see it is 
good enough for the children of our God who Himself 
is Truth. 


“Since early times Christians have re- 
garded the Bible as insmred, that is, 
written by men of religious insight under 
divine guidance; and as revelation, that 
is, the record wherein God shows Himself 
and His truth. For centuries inspiration 
was thought to have guaranteed the Bible 
from scientific, historical, and all other 
kinds of error, all fallibility of its human 
authors being divinely removed; while 
revelation was so conceived as to deny 


YOUR READING 


all progress in the divine truth as re- 
vealed. The Bible was held to be a unit, 
literally and equally inspired from cover 
to cover. 

“A century of study more intense, more 
adequately equipped, and more histori- 
cally minded than Christendom had pre- 
viously known has revolutionized the two 
ideas of inspiration and revelation. We 
now know that we can appreciate the full 
meaning of inspiration only by studying 
the historic forces, and the men of reli- 
gious genius, that God guided to produce 
a Bible not literally inerrant but alive 
with religious insight. And we can under- 
stand the written revelation of God only 
when we view it as progressive, beginning 


_ with the record of simple and often bar- 


baric beliefs and practices of the early 
Hebrews, and after over a thousand years 
of growth culminating in the New Tes- 
tament’s presentation of the Person and 
teachings of our Lord. So studied and 
understood, the Bible retains its unique 
place as the Sacred Book of our religion.” 


143 


1N. B. Nash, in Spectacles for Bible Readers. Wright and Potter, 


Boston. 


144 


CREATIVE TEACHING | 


O Christ my Master, these Gospels are a 
portrait of thee. I follow thee because thou 
art the truth. Then must I be truthful. Be- 
cause I love thee so dearly, I must not tell the 
least, the whitest lie to thy glory. Thou need- 
est not that I should lie. Thy cause doth not 
hang on my arm. I must not then by dogmatic 
stratagem seek to win thy fight unfairly. Here 
am I set as one little candle in the midst of 
many stronger than I. Thy cause is to be main- 
tained by me in the face of doubters. But, 
unless I am sure that these others are not in 
thy confidence, why may it not be that thy 
cause is to be maintained in some measure by 
them against me? Since I know that my 
opinion of thee is profoundly unworthy of | 
thee, I must expect to be tutored by thee still 
in a thousand unexpected ways. Se 
Thou needest not my pious frauds. But I need 
thy love. O help me, for thy dear sake, to keep 
myself from all manner of untruth and un- 
truthfulness.* 


O Lord of all love and light, let me tread the 
temple of truth with reverent feet. Let me not 
desecrate its sacred precincts with brawling 
and brow-beating, nor defile its altar with 
scorn for anything my brethren have believed." 


1H. 8. Nash. 


YOURSELF 





YOURSELF 
67 


You ARE AN ARTIST 


You see then that teaching is an art. (It is not a 
science, but like all arts it uses science.) If you are 
a teacher, you must be an artist. 

But “artists are born and not made.” 

So it is said; yet it is only a half truth. That is, 
it is true that artists are born. But they are made 
artists by dint of pains and toil and self-control 
and efforts most arduous. Artists not made? Ask 
any painter, sculptor, poet, singer, teacher. Such a 
fashioning and re-fashioning have they been through, 
such patient study, by such unconquerable will, as only 
they themselves know. The saying that artists are 
born and not made was not coined by an artist. 

The beautiful picture, the perfect song, the liber- 
ated pupil—emerging from the hand of painter, com- 
poser, teacher—are made if ever anything was made. 
Created, formed, given birth. Born again! And 
through no accident of circumstance, but by the grace 
of an artist’s untiring toil. 


Remember, O Lord, what thou hast wrought 
in us, and not what we deserve; and, as thou 
hast called us to thy service, make us 
worthy of our calling; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 

147 


148 CREATIVE TEACHING 


68 
Non-TEACHERS 


The exceptions you take to my last letter interest 
me. You have put the case well. It is true that 
there is another side to the story which my former 
letter did not touch upon. (Can every phase of any 
subject be covered in a single letter?) What I tried 
to say was that since a teacher is an artist he has to 
be made as well as born. 

For an art is nothing apart from its exercise. It is 
activity whether it be the art of painting, of singing, 
or of teaching. You do not have an art, as you have 
eyes and ears; you have a skill that is both an endow- 
ment and an acquirement, and you ezercise it. That 
is why you cannot be an artist without becoming one 
through practice. The painter becomes an artist by 
painting, and the more he paints the more of an 
artist he is likely to become. That is what I mean 
when I say that an artist is more “made” than “born.” 
So much for that. Ay 

But, as you suggest, there is another side. Some 
people are so constituted that they are not likely ever 
to make a go of the art of teaching. For while 
there is room for improvement in every good teacher, 
however richly endowed with natural gifts, which can 
be realized through effort, yet, no amount of effort 
can make every person a good teacher. There are 
people whom no amount of pains will avail to make 
into painters, and others whom no amount of training 
apparently will turn into real teachers. Something in 
their psychology seems to rule out teaching as a pos- 
sible achievement. They are and remain non-teachers, 
just as truly as glass is a non-conductor of electricity. 


YOURSELF 149 


Perhaps we can sum up the whole matter by saying: 

Hosts of people are born with the minimum gift needed 
to acquire the art of teaching. 

All these people can become proficient in this art by 
practice. 

Others are born with tendencies or characteristics which 
make it unlikely, if not impossible, for them to become 
proficient in the art of teaching even if they try. 


There remains, however, one thing more to be said. 
Though teaching has many points in common with 
other arts, there is an important respect in which it 
differs from such arts as painting or music. I refer 
to the comparative universality of teaching as a human 
enterprise. 

Practically everybody does a little teaching. Each 
of us is a center of influence. Practically all the in- 
fluence we radiate is innocently pedagogical. 

Then, too, there is something instinctively parental 
in all of us. Every man possesses all or most of the 
abilities and tendencies which belong to fatherhood, 
and every woman the corresponding graces and powers 
belonging to motherhood. Teaching is one of the 
abilities natural to both motherhood and fatherhood. 
Every parent has to do some teaching, and every adult 
is at least a potential parent. 

Even this does not end the story, for a lot of teach- 
ing work creeps into our business and professional 
relationships. Really, there is an extraordinary 
amount of teaching done in business and perhaps an 
equal amount in most of the professions. You can 
see, therefore, that teaching does differ from the other 
arts. It is not true to say that practically everyone 
has to play the violin a little, or to paint pictures 8 


150 CREATIVE TEACHING 


little; but it is true that practically everyone is teach- 
ing something incidentally to somebody all the time. 

No matter what the walk of life, a man is almost 
always more efficient if he has some ability in teach- 
ing. I think it would surprise you if you were to 
test this statement by actual cases. Take, for in- 
stance, the work of a carpenter, a doctor, an insurance 
agent, an actor, a housekeeper, a landscape gardener, 
a storekeeper, a dressmaker, a politician, a lawyer. 
Now a good teacher must be a leader, a friend; in- 
telligent, original, ingenious, sympathetic, far-sighted, 
adaptable, alert; able to like all types of people; 
humble, self-controlled, strong, versatile, and conse- 
crated. Above all, a good teacher must be able to 
look at a situation from many points of view, to under- 
stand how things appear and sound and feel to the 
other person. Is it not plain that these qualities are 
the very ones in a carpenter, doctor, housekeeper, 
lawyer, or dressmaker that would induce you to choose 
them to do your work? In considering the cases of 
men and women who have failed in various business 
and professional careers, I have often been struck 
by the fact that what they really lacked were some 
of the more obvious qualities that distinguish good 
teaching. 

69 


INTANGIBLE 


A good many of the factors which go to make suc- 
cess in teaching cannot be crystallized into rules or 
even principles. They are too intangible for that. 
Yet they are very important. For instance, every 
teacher creates a certain atmosphere. Your pupils 
will find you either likable or the reverse; either. ha- 


YOURSELF 151 


bitually cheerful or habitually gloomy; either positive 
or negative; either fussy or calm; either distracted or 
self-controlled. There are no rules for making atmos- 
phere of the right kind except common sense and 
prayer and a good life. The reason why I mention it 
is to remind you of the fact that in your classroom 
work it is of the first importance. 

Whatever happens you have simply got to be at 
your very best during those forty minutes on Sunday. 
Even if you have a headache or a worry or some other 
disability, you must rise above it for those few minutes. 
In the eyes of your pupils you are an almost official 
embodiment of Christ’s religion, and you fail in every- 
thing if you fail to make goodness attractive. 

I have just said there are no fixed rules, but here 
are a few hints for what you may find them worth: 
Never hurry. Never be nervous. Never scold. Never 
let it appear that you are making a great exertion. 
Never place a barrier between yourself and your class, 
but say ‘““We” oftener than “You and I.” Be approach- 
able. Be habitually optimistic. Be agreeable. Of 
course you must have definite standards, and you will 
need plenty of backbone; but try to induce your group 
to make these standards their standards, and try to 
make any offense appear as an offense against the 
fellowship of the class rather than against you 
personally. 

It is much easier to tell you what are the right things 
to do than to tell you how to achieve them. There 
are two extremes to be avoided. One is the rigid, 
antagonistic schoolmarm, irritable and sarcastic, hard 
and bitter, who has been portrayed in some of the 
novels of a generation ago; and the other is the futile 
and silly faddist, who has not so often been described 


152 CREATIVE TEACHING 


in books, but of whom a perfect picture can be found 
in a novel called “A Pocketful of Poses,” by Anne C. 
Parrish. 


70 
A Loose WRIsT 


Be sure that your teaching-method is flexible. In 
a well-taught class the children do not sit stiffly in 
rows and all do precisely the same thing at the same 
moment. A lesson is not a military drill. You ought 
to do different things on different Sundays, and the 
various pupils should often be doing different things 
at the same time on the same Sunday. Each one 
ought to contribute actively toward the success of the 
lesson, and in that case the contribution of one pupil 
will be different from that of another. One will be 
artistic, another musical, another executive, and so on. 

Be original. Think up schemes which no teacher has 
ever tried before. Remember that any method is good 
which brings about the desired result, which is that 
the religion of Jesus Christ shall flourish in the lives 
and characters of all your pupils. 

In watching different teachers at work with their 
classes I am sometimes reminded of two types of 
horsemanship. The novice who drives a pair of horses 
sits rigidly in his place, grasps the reins stiffly, and — 
holds the horses at a constant tension. At the slightest 
sign of wilfulness or caprice on their part he instantly 
draws the reins tighter. Nervous and suspicious, he 
creates nervousness and suspicion in his horses. The 
expert driver, on the other hand, sits at ease and holds 
the reins competently but lightly, allowing the horses 
plenty of free play. They move along gracefully and 


YOURSELF 153 


with ease, for along the reins from the driver’s hand 
runs the invisible current of perfect control. 

Something like this is the way of a good teacher and 
her pupils. As teacher you control. But one of the 
indications of your competency is the fact that you 
allow your pupils a large freedom. 


O my dear Master, give me a deeper love for 
the minds of those I teach. Keep me from 
forcing my opinions on them. Let me rever- 
ence them, and so teach them to reverence 
themselves.' 


71 
Your BEHAVIOR 


A man was once asked if he would make an address 
to a group of Church-school teachers on the subject of 
“behavior.” He agreed to do so, but on the occasion, 
to the surprise of his audience, he spoke about the 
behavior of the teachers and officers. 

The fact is that nearly all misbehavior on the part 
of pupils is due to misbehavior on the part of their 
teachers or officers. Needless to say, the misbehavior 
takes an entirely different form, consisting in careless- 
ness and mismanagement, poorly-prepared lessons, 
nervousness, and aimlessness. Shortcomings of this 
kind on the part of the faculty breed corresponding 
disorder on the part of the pupils. 

In the same way, the quality of worship on the part 
of the pupils depends largely upon the “behavior” in 
worship of the teachers. Some people when they are 
in church worship God with all their heart and mind 
and soul, not making an unseemly display (for that 
would rob the act of genuineness) but being actually 

1H. S. Nash. 


154 CREATIVE TEACHING 


abstracted and lost in the business of the hour. A 
great student of religion has said, “People admire not 
that which you tell them is admirable, but that which 
they see you admire; they worship not what you tell 
them is worthy, but what they find you worshipping.” 

Any carelessness or half-heartedness on your part 
in the house of God will undo even the most eloquent 
and skilled verbal lesson on worship. 


72 
STRENGTH 


We have all had teachers, and we know the difference 
between weak and strong ones. Here for instance is 
a weak teacher. She is to teach drawing. The child 
sits at his desk with a pencil in his hand. Yonder is a 
vase of flowers which has been assigned to him to. 
draw, but his first work was too poor to pass. After 
several of these failures, the weak teacher finally 
seizes the child’s hand in her own, guides the pencil, 
and gets the picture drawn. The chief aim of the 
weak teacher is “to get the thing done.” 

Consider now the strong teacher. She makes the 
child believe that he can do better; she fairly supplies 
him with her own eyes so that he can distinguish be- 
tween his false lines and his true ones; she encourages; 
she is patient. After a while, fired with a zeal that lifts 
all his powers to a new pitch of concentration, her 
pupil draws a creditable picture and does it himself. 
In other words, the strong teacher develops ability in 
her pupil. The teacher who keeps her hands off is the 
able teacher. Power is not the same as force. The 
dominating power of one will over another is one thing, 
the gracious influence of one personality over another 


YOURSELF 155 


personality is a very different and superior thing. 
The very climax of power is self-restraint. 


THE GOOD TEACHER? 


The Lord is my teacher, 
I shall not lose the way. 


He leadeth me in the lowly path of learning, 

He prepareth a lesson for me every day; 

He bringeth me to the clear fountains of instruction, 
Little by little he showeth me the beauty of truth. 


The world is a great book that he hath written, 
He turneth the leaves for me slowly; | 

They are all inscribed with images and letters, 
He poureth light on the pictures and the words. 


He taketh me by the hand to the hill-top of vision, 
And my soul is glad when I perceive his meaning; 
In the valley also he walketh beside me, 

In the dark places he whispereth to my heart. 


Even though my lesson be hard it is not hopeless, 
For the Lord is patient with his slow scholar; 

He will wait awhile for my weakness, 

‘In the dark places he whispereth to my heart. 


O God, give me thy patience, thy respect for 
the rights of the spirits whom thou hast cre- 
ated. No thought so clearly sheweth thy 
majesty to me as the thought of thy self- 
restraint, that thou in thine almightiness canst 
bide thy time so patiently, canst shelter the 
flickering fire of human love and intelligence, 
fan it so kindly, blow it so gently. Oh, thy 
goodness is past searching! I, I make a bel- 
lows of my little wisdom and blow so vigor- 


1 Henry van Dyke. Courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons. 


156 CREATIVE TEACHING 


ously at the opinions of my pupils that I blow 
out the fire which I fain would make brighter. 
Make me more jealous of their rights. I am not 
set in my chair to thrust opinions into them, 
but to make them manly lovers of the truth. 
Should not a true warrior for God be glad 
when a younger warrior so mastereth the art of 
fence as to hold and more than hold his own 
against himself? Let my prayer be, “May 
these men come to all I am and overcome it.” 
Take the film from mine eyes, that I may see 
the empty spaces filled with the hosts of God. 
Then shall I be gentle, and then shall I be 
strong.? : 


3 
TEACHABLENESS 


Perhaps the most fatal weakness of a teacher is 
“cocksureness.”’ Anyone who feels that he knows 
all about teaching, that he can handle his class effee- 
tively week after week without much preparation, or 
that he has finished his teacher-training and has noth- 
ing more to learn, is on the decline if not already 
ruined as a teacher. Teacher-training, if by this we 
mean learning how to teach better, is a process which 
must never end. And with the best teachers it never 
does end. As I have gone about among teachers of all 
sorts and of varying abilities I have been impressed 
over and over again by the humility, the thirst for 
knowledge, exhibited by the ones who possess out- 
standing ability. It is only the ineffective and un- 
imaginative teachers who are contented with their 
present methods and powers. Those who with a 
touch of genius produce remarkable results in the 


1H. §S. Nash. 


YOURSELF 157 


lives of their pupils are always on the alert for better 
things, inquisitive about new ideas and methods, ready 
to learn patiently anything new that holds out a 
promise of improving their work. In other words, the 
best teacher is always the best learner. 


Give us, O God, the scholar’s conscience, 
that we may never, seeking for effect, go out- 
side our knowledge; and crown thy gifts with 
the prophet’s passion for righteousness and 
truth; through our Teacher and our Guide, 
Jesus Christ.* 

74. 


HuMILITy 


Humility is one of the distinguishing marks of a 
real teacher. What after all is humility? It is a kind 
of wisdom. It consists in knowing the hiding-place of 
power. A humble person is one who seeks power not in 
himself but in the Source of all power, which is God. 
There are various reservoirs of power, situated on dif- 
ferent levels.. For instance there is the golden reser- 
voir of money, which holds considerable power. There 
is the reservoir of popularity or human friendship, 
on a higher level. There is the reservoir of one’s own 
private energy, and others which you can enumerate 
if you examine your own experience. One can draw 
on any or all of these, and there are times when one 
should. But the really humble and truly religious 
person draws ultimately on the highest and greatest, 
who is God, and whose power feeds and sustains all 
lesser reservoirs of strength. 

As a teacher it is your special privilege to let the 
power of God flow through your life into the lives of 


1H. S. Nash. 


158 CREATIVE TEACHING 


your pupils. This you cannot do unless you yourself 
are in direct contact with Him; unless you draw on 
Him as your chief Fountain of strength. To do this 
you must have humility; and if you have humility, 
there is at least the possibility that you may Denemne 
a teacher. 


O God, keep me from grieving that - Holy 
Spirit who would fain guide me into all truth, 
by any stubbornness of ignorance, by any pride 
of opinion, or by any prejudice in favor of my 
own conceits. Give me, O my Teacher, the 
lowliness and loftiness of mind becoming those 
who are thinking thy thoughts after thee.’ 


75 
SHow CHRIST 

The central duty of a teacher of the Christian 
religion is to show Christ. | 

First, this means to show Jesus, the Man of Galilee, 
as He really was. Try to stand out of the way so that 
His vivid life will strike your pupils with something of 
the surprising force and freshness with which it first 
electrified the folk of Galilee.2 Do not be eager to dis- 
cuss theories about the Lord Jesus, but show Him. If 
only you can do this, His majestic figure will do its 
own work in the lives of your pupils without further 
assistance from you. We teachers are too apt to stand 
between our Lord and His children. Never let it be 
possible for the boys in your class to say that they 
would have seen Jesus more clearly if you had not 
been so much in the way. Let it be your constant aim 
to put Jesus of Nazareth forward into the light where 
your pupils may see His face clearly and catch 


1H. S. Nash. 
2 Letter 17. 


YOURSELF 159 


the clear outlines of His character. In order to do this 
you will have to spend hours in His company every 
week. Read all four Gospels repeatedly, and reflect 
upon the life and character there portrayed. 

In the second place, you must show them the living 
Christ. Only in the degree that you can truthfully 
say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I that live, but 
Christ liveth in me” can you be to them for Christ 
what Christ is to all of us for God. 


O Master of life and God of my salvation, 
fasten my attention on the things that are high 
and eternal. Keep me from the profanity of 
wandering thoughts, and the frivolity of sur- 
face thinking. Help me to live with Jesus and 
to think with Jesus, so that my message may be 
a word from him to men, winged with power 
to reveal and to bless; to thy honour and praise, 
and to the help of my fellow-men.' 


THE TEACHER ? 
Lord, who am I to teach the way 


To little children day by day, 
So prone myself to go astray? 


I teach them knowledge, but I know 
How faint they flicker and how low 
The candles of my knowledge glow. 


I teach them love for all mankind 
And all God’s creatures, but I find 
My love comes lagging far behind. 


Lord, if their guide I still must be, 
Oh let the little children see 
The teacher leaning hard on Thee. 


1H. §S. Nash. 2 Leslie Pickney Hill. 








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